(written by Islander)
The Swedish group Teratum rose up from the ashes of the band Beastiality in 2024, and the next year they viciously announced themselves with a two-song promo tape made available in extremely small quantities. They are now following that with a debut EP named Ordnance of Spiritual Warfare, which will be widely released by Dying Victims Productions on August 21st.
The EP includes re-recorded versions of both songs from the demo, and two more. For those who weren’t exposed to the demo tape, Teratum’s music does draw upon the violent black/thrashing antecedents of Beastiality, but it has other dimensions as well — and we’re revealing all of them in our premiere of the EP in its entirety.
The EP opens with “Dead in the Marshes“. Lyrically, the song grotesquely envisions a poisonous, choking marsh filled with rotting figures who should be dead but are not. “Contaminated tyrants”, they wait for the time when they can spread their plague “to curse the world”.
The music creates those ghastly visions through a swarm of nasty tremolo’d chords accented by eerily ringing tones and an ecstatically swirling lead guitar. The drums vividly boom, eagerly snap, and then maniacally race just as the vocals make their appearance; Teratum’s vocalists express the horrid lyrics in unhinged screams and ravenous snarls.
Joined by a vividly bounding bass, the guitars flare into signs of jubilant, otherworldly madness — writhing and glittering, pulsating and feverishly skittering, soaring and swooping. The swarming riffage also descends into poisonous sonic miasmas and creates seizures of lunacy.
The pacing is full-bore and the vocals feel like they could strip paint from walls, but the fretwork is elaborate as well as exhilarating, creating a black/thrashing spectacle that (to these ears) draws on antecedents of speed metal and embellishments of classic heavy metal.
Teratum follow that eye-popping opener with “Leviathan Rise“, the EP’s first single, which arrived with a hellishly effective video that lets us see the face-painted, grime-smeared, and brazenly be-spiked performers tear their way through another high-octane episode of blistering and blazing mayhem in an infernal setting. The video also shows what the credits verify, which is that multiple Teratum members join in the eruptions of vocal savagery.
Like the EP opener, however, the song is elaborate as well as vicious, and the blast-beat drumming frequently shifts into other grooves without easing back on the throttle — until the hell-for-leather pace briefly slows near the song’s mid-point. There, the brightly ringing lead guitar quivers like sonic sorcery, like the expression of a perilous spell, and menacing incantations ensue.
Then comes a song we premiered through a frightfully occult video, “Total Void“. The lyrics of the song, like the lyrics of all four songs on the EP, are again baleful. Paraphrasing only slightly, they celebrate the unbinding of flesh, the pillars of reality crashing down, and a mounting of madness that sets the world ablaze: “Behold the sights of what lies beyond”.
In the music, Teratum immediately give us a glimpse of what lies beyond, unfurling a dismal and unearthly melody above ominously pounding beats. As that melody proceeds, the fretwork begins to heat up and then it boils, the drums more furiously hammer, and three of the band’s members howl those hateful words in teeth-bared unison.
Yet the music continues returning to eerily wailing and perniciously ringing melodies, which flare into hellish tremolo’d ecstasies. The riffing is fiery and crazed, but triumphantly soars, and the vocals also explode in screams of utmost fanaticism above pulse-pounding rhythms.
Teratum conclude the EP with its longest song, “Metropolis of Death“. Teratum take off like a gale-blown wildfire, with the rhythm section thundering and galloping and the guitars thrashing and darting. It’s yet another blood-rushing, head-spinning spectacle, one that reaches its zeniths in quick, gloriously fret-melting guitar solos.
As the song proceeds, Teratum diabolically switch up the riffing, and eventually they also change the pace, decelerating in order to bring forward a mournful yet also menacing melody. Seamlessly, they speed the melody and segue back into greater intensity, running wild once more, like maddened devils freed from their hellish confines to romp and ravish — or, as the lyrics describe, like death triumphant, “The blaze of fateful lightning / The inferno of a terrible swift sword”.
And so, to return to where we began, these Teratum death-worshippers prove through this thrillingly evil EP that their black-thrashing mayhem creates chaos of more dimensions than black-hearted savagery alone. It also proves they’re very adept instrumentalists, capable of going very fast but not flying completely off the rails, and very effective in writing insidiously melodic and highly infectious songs too.
Now listen (if you haven’t started already):
TERATUM Line-up:
DTH: Drums & Vocals
PWL: Vocals & Bass
DMH: Vocals & Guitar
SET: Guitar
Dying Victims Productions will release Ordnance of Spiritual Warfare on 12″ vinyl and CD formats. It features cover artwork by Mørkestøl. It comes recommended for fans of Nifelheim, Desaster, Zemial, Sweden’s Morbid, and Germany’s Poison.
PRE-ORDER:
https://tinyurl.com/teratum
https://dyingvictimsproductions.bandcamp.com/album/ordnance-of-spiritual-warfare
TERATUM:
https://teratum.bandcamp.com
https://www.facebook.com/p/Teratum-61560878560955/
https://www.instagram.com/teratumofficial