Teitanblood – Purging Tongues EP

Jun 18 • International News, Reviews, The Slumbering Ent • 3135 Views

Dipankar Mohanty reviews Teitanblood‘s first EP titled Purging Tongues, released via Norma Evangelium Diaboli. 

The Black/Death genre has seen a serious uptick in the number of bands in recent years and the quality of output has been varied. A fan reaches one of those inflection points in life where he is bombarded with tons of releases and then he/she suddenly realizes that a reality check is in order. The realization that follows is a result of experience and not something that happens overnight. Some get it and some don’t for the rest of their lives. The zeal to question is probably the most important trait that an extreme metal fan must have after the ability to understand the music. It’s here I make this connection with Black/Death and whatever I write I remain within the confines of this genre. Its very easy to get swayed away by the present – new bands, new crushing recordings, raw-ness and chaos; all packaged and marketed to a section of fans who worship these bands/albums and a flimsy production that is supposed to be true and cult. This belief in my strong opinion stems from three facts – 1. A lack of exposure to the past and 2. A lack of interest about the past and, 3. Not enough time spent listening to and absorbing the past; all amplified by a castrated sense of questioning or a complete lack of it.

Teitanblood is one of the most popular bands in the genre, and starting with their first full length – Seven Chalices these guys from Spain have been making quite a bit of noise in the last few years. Purging Tongues is one of their EPs and the best way to describe it is that its a raw and chaotic form of black/death in line with bands like Proclamation, Revenge and Conquerer. I don’t know Spanish so I will not be able to comment on the passages within the EP. I’m guessing it plays a part in communicating the full nature of the album, so I’ll stick to the music. What is the band trying to achieve when it uses riffs that a seasoned listener with one foot firmly entrenched in the past would have grown up with? What is the x-factor? Why operate under the guise of a production that muffles more rather than showcase riffs? The template is pretty basic; raw and chaotic riffing with a production akin to a bootleg/demo from the early 80s. If that’s the novelty factor under the operating motto of “true and cult” then that’s the most flimsy excuse that a fan can hope to hear. Even if I assume that Purging Tongues is trying to pay some sort of tribute to the demo scene back in the 80s and 90s its relevance is completely lost in the modern era. Youtube is responsible for digging up lots of demos and exposing them to the modern generation and that’s good. But, what’s troubling is accepting any demo that is being thrown at the listener. On that line, what’s even more damning is the fact of acceptance of Teitanblood without any sense of questioning and curiosity as to how it compares to its peers – past and present; and that is dangerous to the extreme metal scene. That’s the same sort of thinking associated with pop music. The music that Teitanblood created in Purging Tongues is not to question their workmanship, ethics and integrity, but it’s meant to be a reality check for fans who don’t ask why and what for?

RATING: 1/5 (Banish the stench of this botched ritual from my memory )

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The Chant – New Haven

Jun 15 • International News, Reviews, The Slumbering Ent • 3709 Views

Deckard Cain reviews the new album from The Chant titled New Haven, released via Lifeforce Records

Depression.. A creaky see saw with a medical condition at one end and a mild change of mood that you slip in and out of, at the other. Nobody stays in the same position for long but some slide to the opposite end quite so easily. While Prozac and its cousins might push you in to the eye of the storm and offer temporary relief, no chemical ensures a flower-laden alley to a ‘brighter’ outside. Escape from it has always had alternatives but most important of all has been mutual interaction and the parting of sorrow that accompanies it. This ideal probably ascribes to the very existence of depressive undercurrents in music from time immemorial. Sharing it with someone, be that a person or something as metaphysical in concept as music. In effect tacitly approving of the development of whole subgenres around themes that might seem somber and equally unsettling to those people ‘outside looking in’(non-affected) while becoming shared sorrow to the ones ‘inside looking out’.

These undercurrents are probably the very ones that gave rise to the strain of doom in metal. Now this brings us to the album in question, New Haven by the Finnish sextet The Chant. As far as their music and the kind of doom laden atmosphere that they employ, goes, you’d find them more in common with latter day Katatonia and Judgement/Alternative 4 era Anathema (and even some of their latest releases). One could say that it is definitely the most accessible side of the genre and more atmospheric rock than anything hardbound metal. Then again, there is a surfeit of bands that dwell within the walls of the genre, building up their contrived moods of despair, only to sound nothing but too conspicuous of their plebian outputs. But The Chant, just like their peers and fellow countrymen Hanging Garden (with a remarkably similar sound), place and hit at all the right wedges, cracking open our shields that are in place to ward off boring material. The all pervasive melancholy that seems to grow on Finnish soil extends and entangles its despair daubed tentacles around us.

With vocals that sound extremely similar to Vincent Cavanagh, Anathema might be a constant reference point and yet with tracks like the opener ‘Earthen’ armed with an infectious riff that serves as a constant motif in the song is something that Anathema might never be able to pull off. It’s the ringing of the riff well after the song has ended that makes you go for the ‘play’ button, again.  Tracks titled ‘Minotaur’ but ironically one of the more morose and strongest on the album, the slightly upbeat Cloud Symmetry are what keep repetition at bay. Now there is always a risk of sounding the same in several songs, one problem that they cannot seem to let go off. But for me all the slight nuances seemed apparent with successive listens. Their previous output The Healing Place – which was indeed my first listen – was a decent release but it quite failed to elicit a reaction that further elicits a cause to re-listen. I was rather quick to shelve it and give the last record from In The Silence a better spin in 2012.

New Haven is an aligning of the band’s skills that gifts it with a staying power like none of their previous forays. You could describe it as a potent seed of everlasting despair that when sprouts, release a miasma of submissiveness that the listener will succumb to, and yet revel in. Embrace this pall of gloom..

RATING : 4/ 5 ( This mighty tome will resurrect the dead, but it may not turn lead to gold )

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