TEITANBLOOD — The Baneful Choir (review)

TEITANBLOOD — The Baneful Choir album cover

Album · 2019 · War Metal

4/5 · 2019-10-26
siLLy puPPy

TEITANBLOOD has forged its own unique sound in the world of extreme metal over the years since its formation in Madrid, Spain all the way back in 2003 but hasn’t been the most prolific band out there since then. While it took six years for the debut “Seven Chalices” to hit the world in 2009, the band has only released three full-length albums since its inception. It has however filled in the cracks with several EPs and a split.

The band has undergone a few lineup changes with drummer J and vocalist / bassist / guitarist N.S.K. remaining the only original members. Emerging from the depths of hell once again to deliver a sonic slice of impending doom and destruction, the band has just unleashed the ferocious third album THE BANEFUL CHOIR onto the metal universe and like a megaton of a nuclear arsenal has made an impact crater in the psyche of a receptive audience.

While not substantially different than the band’s other two albums, TEITANBLOOD continues to defy genre classification by crafting its own brand of blackened death metal. The death metal ferocity still delivers an incessant attack of energetic dissonance and rabid riff magic with the darkened black metal gloom that bleeds into the war metal category. While war metal can come across as a bit one dimensional, THE BANEFUL CHOIR is a magnificent display of not only rampaging speedy attacks of sound but also implements slower elements such as doomy passages as well as dark ambient intros which provided the much needed contrast.

THE BANEFUL CHOIR joins a host of newer extreme metal artists that have mastered the art of metal production in the context of the ugliest brutality the music world has to offer. TEITANBLOOD exercises the segregation of sounds and hierarchy of tones and timbres to create a surreal and hellish soundtrack for the underworld and beyond. While keeping the guitar sounds in a somewhat lo-fi compression zone, this allows the thundering bass and drum bombast to emerge from the cacophonous din without affecting the murderous war march of the riffing which evokes a primeval 80s thrash attack in the vein of early Kreator or Sodom.

The vocals are steeped in black metal overtones and are set back in the mix to evoke a trapped soul trying to escape the blackened forces that imprison him in some lower vibrational prison complex. The mixing job is perfect for this kind of music and the dark ambient passages seamlessly flow and blend in with the triumphant metal bombast that constitutes the ultimate damnation in musical form. The album is strangely hypnotic as the receptive riffs pummel the senses with a smooth atmospheric backdrop which is barely audible subliminally strangles the light.

War metal is a moody beast and takes the listener into the darkest recesses that the metal world can conjure up and while many such bands come off as mere amateurs despite displaying excellent musicianship, TEITANBLOOD shows a true mastery of not only the extreme metal technicalities but also of the subtle nuances that can make or break an album of this style. Add to that the tracks are varied with some existing more in the black metal world and others like “Sunken Stars” evoking an early Morbid Angel style of death metal attack. Just when i think war metal has run its course, i’m pleasantly surprised and TEITANBLOOD has delivered some of the darkest most rampaging examples of metal so far this year.