Barcelona's TERATOMA have been around since 1996, when they released their first demo.  They're a veteran death metal band that is grounded strongly in the dark, ugly, punkish tradition of the genre.  "Chaosmakers" is forty minutes of solid, pummeling death, an apt tribute to the absolutely horrifying inspiration for their name:  a bizarre cancerous growth that includes teeth, hair, muscle and bone.  (Oddly enough, there's another OSDM band from Berlin called TERATOMA that released an album in March of this year called "Purulent Manifestations".  There's probably nothing worse on earth than a battle of the bands, but one between two death metal groups vying for the name of a cancer gone violently rogue might be worth the price of admission.) The album deals with themes of destruction, in particular the destruction of our planet at the hands of the chaosmakers, which- if you can't guess- happen to be me and you. This is a soundtrack for the dissolution of life on Earth.  It's music built on the remnants of destruction. It's music for those of us who like our death metal straight to the blood-covered tip of the sword.  Just make sure that blood is a healthy mix of tissue, hair, bone and teeth fragments, topped off with a fine sheen of pinkish, severed muscle.  It's the sonic equivalent of a teratoma.

Title song "Chaosmakers" is a prime example of the template in which the band operates.  It starts off right away with a brutal blast beat and a short, primal roar from singer Titopsy, before shortly dropping off into a mid-tempo, heavy AF groove. "CHAOS!," spits Titopsy. "MAKERS!," a soundtrack for planeticide, the theme song for the robotic behemoth of hellfire that graces the cover art.  Titopsy's death growls are vomitous exploitations of consonants and vowels, as if they've bypassed his diaphragm and are coming directly from the thirty-plus feet of intestines coiled up within his guts. The vocals are a highlight: he has a tendency to go from these low-baritone death growls to screechy black-metalesque screams several times within a song.  It's a much needed respite from the relentless ugliness guitar players Juanjo and Juanma unleash over the foundation of destruction created by drummer Sergi and bass player Xose.

The next song "The Forsaken Wolf Children'' continues with this relentless death metal assault.  Juanjo and Juanma are accomplished guitar players, exchanging leads back to back during the song's instrumental break.  While it's clearly difficult to discern the narrative heft of the vocals, it's nice to know that not all wolf children are, in fact, forsaken.  But no one is writing death metal songs about wolf children who attend private schools and have tutors at home with their wolf families.  TERATOMA is about the forsaken ones, damn it! The next song "Madness in a Merciless Mind" is an album highlight.  If death metal has the ability to be 'fun,' this one is it: it's a punkish exploration of classic death, with a repeated riff during the outro that's almost downright catchy. "Rituals in the Cenotaph'' has a brutal breakdown about half-way through that propels the band into a petulant, putrid, pounding blast beat-filled bridge before Titopsy vomits up the title and Juanjo and Juanma collapse into quick, noisy, chaotic leads.

"Chaosmakers" is true-to-form traditional death metal.  The production is a bit too polished to clearly entrench it in that "old school" camp, but anyone who wants to dip their ears into some foul-stenched metal would have those aural orifices fulfilled by TERATOMA's homage to their forebears.  The riffs are heavy and effective, and Titopsy's death growls are as good as anybody out there, to be honest. In the end, however, if the soundtrack to the end of the world is filled with death metal bands vying to be baptized in the blood of eight billion dying souls, TERATOMA may get lost in that deadly shuffle.  They have the technical ability to play at the highest level, as they clearly do on "Chaosmakers".  If they can infuse this talent with the creative equivalent of a rapidly spreading tumor, TERATOMA may be around long after the cancer has destroyed us all.