Review by Daniel for Teitanblood - Seven Chalices (2009)

My first impressions around Spanish death/war metal outfit Teitanblood were instigated quite early on in their recording career upon my return to metal in 2009. The band had already released a demo & a couple of split releases in the mid-2000’s but their debut album “Seven Chalices” would be their first record of any significance & the timing of its release matched up pretty much perfectly with the recommencement my extreme metal journey. Given that a lot of the metal I was hearing at the time was attempting to dilute the very core of what I felt that metal music should be, I have to admit that the idea of “Seven Chalices” & its consistently savage & deeply underground approach really appealed to me & looking back I’d suggest that I really WANTED to love this record, perhaps a touch more than it actually deserved too. With that in mind, I’ve always suspected that perhaps I might have been overrating it a little, particularly in the wake of my passion for Teitanblood’s later albums. Given that I’ve only recently revisited & reviewed those two outstanding examples of the war metal sound, it’s only natural that I give the Spaniards’ debut the same level of attention.

It's clear right from offset that “Seven Chalices” is a very different record to 2014’s “Death” & 2019’s “The Baneful Choir”. The five year gaps between these full-lengths have given the band a lot of time to grow & develop their sound so it’s hardly surprising. “Seven Chalices” is far less modern & presents more of an old-school sound that’s noticeably rawer & lacking in the density of Teitanblood's more sophisticated work. Unlike the band's later releases which are more heavily weighted towards war metal, the dual tagging of both death metal & war metal seems more appropriate on “Seven Chalices” due to the consistent use of doomy, lower-tempo, Celtic Frost-inspired death metal riffs, particularly on tracks like opener “Whore Mass” & the epic album centrepiece “The Abomination of Desolation”. During those moments I’m reminded a lot of Finland’s Archgoat with the very structure of the down-tuned hum of a guitar tone sounding like it’s almost on the brink of completely breaking down. When Teitanblood up the tempo into genuine war metal territory however, they’re as violent & chaotic as a drunken brawl at a Sadistik Exekution show with the scatty, layered vocal ranting of FSK sounding nothing short of psychotic & the intentionally sloppy guitar solos veering a lot closer to pure noise than towards anything close to a defined theme or structure.

Somehow though, “Seven Chalices” doesn’t seem to gel anywhere near as much as Teitanblood’s more accomplished later works. It’s simply not as cohesive which possibly has something to do with the production which is more about atmosphere & aesthetics than it is about depth & substance with the drums being too far back in the mix to really drive the songs from a rhythmic point of view. In fact, despite there not being any weak tracks as such, I actually find the four dark ambient interludes that have been provided by fellow Spaniard Like Drone Razors Through Flesh Sphere to be more accomplished than any of the metal material. Don’t get me wrong, “Seven Chalices” is certainly an entertaining listen & if you’re a fan of bands like Proclamation, Pseudogod & Archgoat then you’ll no doubt enjoy it but I’m not sure there’s as much meat on its bones as there is on Teitanblood’s later albums. It’s a more than decent first-up full-length but was still a work in progress in my opinion.