Teitanblood – “Woven Black Arteries” – [Norma Evangelium Diaboli]

‘Death Magic Black Metal/Death Metal Black Magic’ from Spain: soundtrack to Armageddon, austerity or both. 2011 comp brings together the single-track 16-minute EP ‘Purging Tongues’ (t. 2) and a new 12-minute track (1). Teitanblood were always on the more avant-garde side of the ‘War Metal’ dominion, but stretching Conqueror out to a quarter-hour? Never fear, they have the aplomb to pull it off, invoking Kreator and Venom’s better self-indulgences back when, as well as bands I wish we had in our library like Bulldozer and Dragged Into Sunlight. The tooth-shattering guitar tone’s been scaled back in the mix a little since the 1st and only full-length, 2009′s ‘Seven Chalices,’ but this is still heavy enough to give Cult of Daath a run for it, although maybe not Coffins anymore. Vox have gotten better: nice and sleazy. T.1 has no significant interludes; it really is just a long blackthrash song. And it’s great. It’s actually longer as a song than t.2, which starts with a Spanish monologue, then works its way up from a sick doom intro (starting at 1:30) to Martire face-eating (and revisitation of the vox echo so beloved by this band) for about 5 min, then brings back the voiceover and lets it run through to the end of the song in various states of adornment- about 3 more min of metal and then the last 3 min of the track are basically dark ambient and some Spanish dude. I don’t speak much Spanish but I’m pretty sure he’s talking about the end of the world. The last word is ‘amen.’ Amen indeed.