Artist: Teitanblood
Country: Spain
Label: Norma Evangelium Diaboli
Formats: LP / CD
Year: 2025
With especially the band’s first two albums, Teitanblood rose to true underground fame. Their sense for combining utter musical barbarity and impeccable song writing as well as ditto dark imagery made them the incarnate synonym of Black/Death Metal elitism. And, frankly, not for no reason. These first albums, ‘Seven Chalices’ (2009) and ‘Death’ (2014) are much cited sources of inspiration for many a modern band that ventures in the same murky realms of chaotic and sonically challenging Black/Death Metal. Therefore, a new album by these Spaniards is always met with a great deal of enthusiasm, even with a modest hype amongst the followers of this niche genre in underground Extreme Metal.
But, with having heard ‘From The Visceral Abyss’ a very good few times now, it is fair to conclude that there might indeed be many followers in Teitanblood’s wake to underground fame, but there clearly levels to everything. Boys will be boys and kings will be kings.
‘From The Visceral Abyss’ is yet another prime example that this sort of music is not merely noise for noise’s sake. I am sure you shouldn’t let just any random person at the mall on a Saturday afternoon listen to it. But anyone well-versed into the very depths of Extreme Metal will have to acknowledge that Teitanblood is an act extraordinaire.
The album largely follows the paths chosen with the previous recordings. But, compared to some of the earlier albums, ‘From The Visceral Abyss’ is a far more riff-based affair. Even if Teitanblood is known for incorporating almost Ambient/Noise/Drone-like passages and intermezzos, these have now been reduced to the bare minimum. There are still some effects within (almost) all individual tracks, but they are much more integrated within the music itself. So, basically, these electronics are not merely served as a side dish, but have been mixed in the main course. That allows the music to be even more frantic and downright wild. One of the best examples is this album’s title track, that goes down as one of the fiercest, fastest and most violent tracks ever written in the Teitanblood history. That track might be the heaviest, it is also exemplary for what the album stands for. The sometimes ritualist nature of the previous albums is largely gone, except for the only intermezzo in the middle and the closing, 14-minute larger-than-life track, instead you are force-fed with an overwhelming load skull cracking riffs and blasting rhythms.
This brings us to a two-minded judgement. Perhaps ‘From The Visceral Abyss’ is the least atmospheric of all Teitanblood’s recordings, but at the very same time it is also the most complex piece work to date. What the album maybe lacking in atmosphere is more than made up for with mind bending intensity. Add an impressively heavy production that allows the music to be more devastating than ever before. But even with that remarkably clean production, ‘From The Visceral Abyss’ needs more than just a couple of spins to be able to fully wrap your head around. If you were in need of one, overarching conclusion: if anything, ‘From The Visceral Abyss’ fully lives up to its title.
