Year: 2025
Label: Norma Evangelium Diaboli
It’s been quite a while since we last heard from Spanish Teitanblood. Their previous album was 2019’s The Baneful Choir (reviewed here); since then, it’s been awfully quiet. Luckily, however, it was not the quiet of perpetual death.
So, what has changed during the past half decade? Has Teitanblood’s cavernous black metal remained the same, or have the carrion winds of change blown over the fields of bones?
The easy answer is that Teitanblood has remained the same. By and large, and especially on a more cursory glance or a superficial take, From The Visceral Abyss is quite similar to earlier material.
This means down-tuned, cavernous, chaotic and bestial black metal. Chaotically, frenetically sawing guitars, speedy tempos, daemonically barking vocals. Stuff that sounds like earlier Beherit, and even more specifically the stuff they recorded as The Lord Diabolus. One foot in death metal, but still on the black side of the black/death metal divide.
But the long answer is a bit more complicated. Which is kind of obvious, isn’t it?
You see, whilst Teitanblood have retained their characteristic elements, they have also dared to expand their sound. There are elements that at least feel new. At least more accentuated than before.
The first thing I noted is that some of the riffs feel more discordant than before. This brings to mind some newer black metal acts, who base a large part of their sound on discordance. There are also sparingly used synths (especially on album closer Tomb Corpse Haruspex) and other means to add more sinister, ominous, entombed atmosphere than before.
To put it in a nutshell, whilst Teitanblood’s most immediate reference points are still to be found in bestial black metal, they’ve also broken out of that mould. Perhaps more in atmospherical than compositional complexity; but the change is real and notable. From The Visceral Abyss is less slavering chaos and more the brooding, encroaching hostility from the perpetual dark of the Tunnels of Set.
What’s the synthesis of the short and long answer, then? Well, quite simple really: From The Visceral Abyss will feel immediately familiar to fans of the old stuff. Fans of bestial black metal will not have a hard time to get into this. But on the other hand, From The Visceral Abyss also successfully broadens Teitanblood’s benighted horizons. Here is a rare breed of band that can be associated with bestial black metal: one that actually pushes the envelope of the niché sound.
In the past already, I’ve described Teitanblood as a band who’ve managed to renew and/or introduce new elements to the stereotype sound. From The Visceral Abyss is very much a case-in-point example of it. Still firmly rooted in the chaotic and primitive sound pioneered by Beherit, Blasphemy and the likes, it nonetheless dares to go beyond. And, best of all, does so successfully.
Above all, in all its uncompromising brutality and vicious barbarity, From The Visceral Abyss is an extremely atmospheric album. This is one of those albums where you don’t focus on riffs or individual songs, but allow yourself to be immersed in the sinister world of tombs and subterranean occult tunnels that unfolds before your mind’s eye.
And by the way, this is one of those albums you need to own in physical format. The booklet of the CD is impressive – and the booklet of the vinyl edition doubly so.
Only Death Is Real 