Back in 2009, Spain’s Teitanblood erupted onto the scene with their debut full length album, Seven Chalices, and gave everyone nightmares with a disturbingly filthy take on bestial black/death metal. Well now they have returned with the simply and aptly titled Death, and while it isn’t as nauseatingly ritualistic  as Seven Chalices, it is far more savage, nasty and direct.

The unsettling guitar tone and vocals have been upped and the ambiance has been reduced somewhat, so new Teitanblood is much more direct in their vitriol. Rather than tendrils of black ickor and throbbing ritualistic throes, Death is more content to flay you alive and dip you in acid. And while there are expected chants or occult strains here or there they are much more subtle and interwoven with the churning miasma of filth as opposed to lengthy or drawn out segues of ambiance, with the exception of the vast “Silence of the Great Martyrs”, which  is about half satanic atmospherics.

The end result is often a overwhelming, relentless album that will leave you ragged. Opener, the simply blistering “Anteinferno” is utterly relentless for 5 minutes before “Sleeping Throats of the Antichrist” , the albums second monster track at 12 and a half minutes rumbles with more sickly mid pace and almost memorable riffage and when teamed with the following track the 9 minute salvo “Plagues of Forgiveness”  and unsettling screech of 11 minute “Cadaver Synod”  it’s just a 30 minute sonic nightmare that’s pretty unrelenting.

Thankfully, “Unearthed Veins” is the album’s shortest cut where you get some reprieve  with a slower, almost instrumental murky march. Buts merely a short bump before “Burning in Damnation’s Fires” returns back to the calamitous filth but also manages to inject arguably the albums most restrained hues about halfway in with a scrawling, doomy march that could be an Autopsy track.

The closing 16 minute “Silence of the Great Martyrs”, the albums arguable centerpiece crackles and burns with insidious malevolence before exploding in a torrent of filthy,blasting discordance and distant growls. The as I mentioned earlier, the last half of the track is the albums sole extended foray into atmospherics and its a damn creepy one with chants throbbing occult throes, that close the album out with ritualistic flair.

Death isn’t  just songs or riffs, but palpably nefarious and menacing sound tracks to esoteric necromancy rituals and vile communions with the Devil, and Teitanblood is the conduit.

[Visit the band's website]

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