Having impulsively decided this past weekend to write about two albums whose releases I had been eagerly anticipating for many months, I felt a temptation to compare them, even though that would be like comparing apples and oranges. Both of them are very good, but the two bands occupy very different niches in the extreme metal underground, and one of them (the creator of the album I reviewed in Part 1 of this post) is constantly re-defining its niche. The other one, Spain’s Teitanblood, hasn’t remained static either, but the changes have been less adventurous. And to be fair, their career is much shorter, with three albums to their name now, compared to more than a dozen for Blut Aus Nord.
Rather than transforming themselves, Teitanblood have just gotten better. In fact, their new album, The Baneful Choir, is their best work yet. And we’d better bask in its savage glories as completely as we can, because if the band follow the pattern they’ve now established, we won’t see another Teitanblood album until 2024. Continue reading »