Philippine female hard rock/metal band Tribal Fish released their self-titled album in 1994. The music is raucous and hard-edged, and displays an admirable amount of swagger and panache by the four female members. This is a rare display of attitude by Philippine female artists, who are usually restricted to singing easy listening love songs. The band injects judicious amounts of melody, which makes the music palatable and enjoyable. For example, a number of songs, including, "Corporate B.S.," "Tuesday on a Tuesday," and "Paano Ba" (How Is It) contain perky, pop-styled melodies, but heard amid a hard rock/metal ambience.
The band often alternates between hard-edged dissonance and melodic pop sequences. "Bulok" contains fast, speed metal guitar that suddenly stops and leads to slow, jingle-jangle, reverb-edged guitar; this pattern is repeated several times. The song also contains some melodic singing that engages a listener. "Sayaw Lukring" (Lukring Dance) has a fast, punk rock tone and the chorus is sung a half-step up from where it should be, but the dissonance adds to the song's charm. "Goblin Lies" starts with gentle singing heard over the strumming of soothing guitar. Soon enough, raucous drums and hard-edged guitars kick in and the song takes on another life. The caustic lyrics involve name-calling between former lovers. The singing is rough-edged, in keeping with the song's caustic tone, but there is still a viable melody.
Tribal Fish is a special album and contains much adventurousness and breaks barriers, but, unfortunately, there was never a follow-up album.
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