Artist: Teitanblood
Title: From The Visceral Abyss
Type: Album
Label: Norma Evangelium Diaboli
A friend once announced that my taste in metal was, and I quote, ‘infuriatingly eclectic’ and quite rightly it was meant as a compliment of sorts. So already on here we have had dark age folk, black metal and dungeon synth. Now after a six year gap, we have the return the blasphemous noise juggernaut that is Teitanblood who along with acts like The Axis Of Perdition and Portal bring my love of utter obliterating noise to the …well, to the surface. But that is a place Teitanblood never dwell. They are from the depths.
The thing with this Spanish cult is that within their thick, black wall of damnation noise there can be nuance and movement. They have slowed things to a thick tar-like crawl and shaken even the odd raw melody before now. So after six years I had no idea at all what this was going to be. None. Other than an ordeal.
‘Enter The Hypogeum’ oozes noise and echo, cthonic tunnels and caverns leading you blindly until the raw riff buzzes and then, in a moment every spec of light, every hope of escape is buried under a huge wall of noise. A riff so huge it blocks out reality. It speeds, it rips, it tears and it utterly crushes you. Relentless, bent out of shape by its own gravity this is a Teitanblood pushing far beyond sanity. Detractors I am sure will say it’s simply noise. But it isn’t. It is an avalanche of destruction and primordial hate and despite.
It’s absolutely glorious.
‘Sepulchral Carrion God’ drags its rotten carcass slowly to unlife. It has a swirls, a stirring sound that reeks of decay. Vocals seem to circle like vultures, the tempo shifts up, claws reach out. Shape is torn apart. ‘From The Visceral Abyss’ has sounds half animal, half something not quite human and then the primitive riff and huge bass crank up and we are dragged on a tour of some hell. Chaotic, shifting guitars only tethered by a thick driving riff tuned to the abyss and drumming that becomes something almost solid. ‘Sevenhundreddogsfromhell’ bark and snarl, lick and gnaw for a moment before ‘Strangling Visions’ retch their images into the maddened void. ‘And Darkness Was All’ is almost total collapse. Yes the riff is curiously, ferociously captivating in the begining but everything else sppeds to breaking point and flies of like malformed shrapnel and a spray of rot.
To make sure the land is burned beyond recognition and soil salted with darkness and malignancy they serve up nearly fifteen minutes of ‘Tomb Corpse Haruspex’. The sound of distant winds, eerie melody and and haunted caverns, something possibly the howls of something lost that you do not wish to meet allow the drumming to build. The howls flood in and the track explodes and contracts again, flails and draws breath. It drives on, on, on. It has intent and shifts the attack here, the hint of a lead break there before blindsiding you with a drill to your head and a monolith pinning your corpse.
It’s merciless.
Even the packaging of the CD is dense, unhinged and mesmeric. Twisted paintings and drawings, scrawled sigils and scratched out words litter it like torn corpses and forgotten manuscripts soaked in ichor.
The most brutal of death metal played by the rawest of black metal bands and driven by a malignant, malicious intelligence. If you can save your mind and body from obliteration during this ordeal, it still simply offers one thing. Annihilation of the abyss.
Masterful.
Gizmo
https://teitanblood.bandcamp.com/album/from-the-visceral-abyss
Walking The Liminal Space 