About two years ago, in the midst of one of those magical New York nights where you end up in places you never would've thought to expect, I got incredibly drunk and followed a few friends to St. Vitus, where the Swedish metal band Tribulation were playing a one-off show on a night off from their tour with Deafheaven and Envy. Which is to say: I got lucky. St. Vitus isn't a big room, and it wasn't full. But in Tribulation, I got to see a band that really belongs in arenas. That's something I thought over and over while watching them play and doing my very best to not topple over sideways: They belong in much, much bigger rooms. Part of that was their makeup, an exact midpoint between standard-issue black metal corpsepaint and the glammed-out kabuki designs that Mötley Crüe used to rock in the Shout At The Devil era. Part of it was the way they moved -- all big gestures and theatrically well-timed hair-flips, as if they were oblivious to the fact that they were playing a bar scarcely bigger than my living room. But most of it was their music, a grand and crashing storm of melody and roar. That night, they sounded huge. Today, they sound even huger.