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Teitanblood: Seven chalices

18/02/10 || Khlysty

I’ve been hearing a lot buzz concerning Teitanblood during the last few months, so I decided to give ‘em a try. Seeing as they belong to the ever-expanding roster of Norma Evangelium Diavoli, I actually expected this to be more in line with the label’s impressive revisionist black metal “sound”. Boy, was I VERY wrong. Teitanblood sounds as if some early and extremely raw death metal band goes ballistic on a speed-and-crack combo and decides to play music while in the midst of some horrible mind fuckery of terror and hatred.

Seriously, these guys seem to go on a one-way-trip to damnation and really enjoying the ride. The sound is completely bestial, chaotic and uncontrollable and the production –murky as fuck-all and totally dirty- renders everything nigh-unintelligible; and I don’t mean only the vocals, which sound as if some sadistic maniac with a terrible case of bronchitis is telling a host of victims what he’s gonna do to them, while cutting indiscriminately here and there. I mean that EVERYTHING here is covered with a heavy layer of pure sonic grime, from where, sometimes, swaths of guitar screaming comes ups, annihilates and disappears just as quickly.

The drums seem to always be on blasting mode, no matter what’s happening to the part of the song we’re in. When they slow down, they seem to settle on the general murk of the sound and be assimilated by it. The riffery, when discernible, is based around downtuned, almost atonal chord-mashing, played out with extreme speed and commendable dexterity. But, and maybe I’m repeating myself here, but what the heck, it seems that the band is basically interested in creating a uniform and extremely vicious vortex of long and convoluted song structures which, at first listen seem to pass the thin red line into total metal dementia.

Of course, multiple listens –and, believe me, it’s not the easiest thing in the world- reveal a method to Teitanblood’s locosity (they’re from Spain, so I thought to create a spanglish word for them. Yay for me!). Throughout the chaos, there are some carefully placed breakdowns, which allow for breathing space before the band launches another no-holds-barred attack. Also, each song, after carefully listening to it, reveals an internal logic in its structure and execution. To say it in a simple manner, these are not mindless riff cut-and-paste excursions, but carefully (dis)organized bursts of violence and blasphemy.

To top things off, the band adds three long interludes of the sickest ambience possible, placing them ingeniously within certain parts of the record. These tracks really work within the context of the record, adding to the atmosphere of sickness, blasphemy and brutality, while giving the listener some jutting from which to hold on throughout the chaos that permeates the record as a whole. I must add, though, that the band seems to make really smart use of keys and sampling throughout the whole of the recording, layering the tracks in ways that pretty soon get under the skin of the listener. I tell you, folks, this is creepy stuff.

So, is there a bottom line to be found with this seeming mess of a record? Actually, yes. I can easily understand why the buzz: Teitanblood is a band which tries and mostly succeeds in turning death metal into a harrowing experience. After listening to “Seven Chalices” for a few times, you’d either be ready to commit unspeakable crimes, or to scrub yourselves raw, so as to remove the “damn spot” this record will leave upon you. Also, I can easily appreciate the ways the band reforms and at the same time undermines death metal. It’s just that this is a mighty draining record: lasting almost one hour, the levels of intensity and the super-sludgy production make it a very demanding listen. And, the fact that this seems to move beyond even the most extreme forms of death metal –with the exception of a few truly envelope-pushing records-, makes it even harder to accept and digest. This is a record that needs time and proper conditions to work. So, my advice is to consume at your own risk.

Information
Released: 2009
Label: co-released by Norma Evangelium Diaboli, Ajna Offensive & Dauthus
Website: www.teitanblood.com
Band
NSK: vocals, guitar, bass
J: drums

Tracklist
01. Whore Mass
02. Domains of darkness and ancient evil
03. Interlude (Arabian title)
04. Morbid devil of pestilence
05. Interlude (Cuneiform title)
06. Infernal dance of the wicked
07. Interlude (Sanskrit title)
08. Seven chalices of vomit and blood
09. Qliphotic necromancy
10. The abomination of desolation
11. The origin of death

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