Portal - Outre

date: 15 6 2008

or How to classify the unclassifiable and describe the undescribable.

Once in a while from the murky depths of a musical genre a new band rears its ugly head, a band so unusual that you can't help but notice it. In Portal's case, the pointy hat sticks out a bit, as well. As a young metal listener, I remember being easily impressed by songs such as Carpathian Forest's "Thanatology"; growing up and moving to the next level, it was Scald (from Ireland)'s turn to leave me speechelss when it came to distorted sounds; now it's time for Portal to do the same.

Best words to describe the "Outre'" experience would be hellish, bold, suffocating. At one time, Portal seem to take on some of the wicked sounds of Today is the Day, at other times, they transform into a vile shredding machine which comes packed in apocalyptic sounds and repetitive, subversive riffs. Vocally, it drifts into the death metal area; on the whole, it is an extreme mixture of both death metal and black metal. Instrumentally, it's one of the densest sounds out there, right at the top, next to atmospheric sludge and atmospheric funeral doom. Outre's main feature is definitely droning; furthermore, who wants insanely fast drumming gets insanely fast drumming to spice up the mix and, what is more, who wants distorted guitars gets distorted guitars to last him a lifetime.

Perhaps one of Outre's weak points is linearity; at a certain point, after several auditions, it becomes a bit much to bear. This is balanced, on the other hand, by the fact that it only lasts about 36 minutes.

Lyric-wise, Portal delve into weirdness again. They chose a concept, image and style to represent them; this, they call the "Vint-Age Mythos". Quaint and obscure images dominate Portal's universe; there is a growing feeling of confinement and matter crushing spirit. Same goes for Jeff Lowe's artwork; he is the author of the Clockfather drawing on the cover. Check out his other creations here: http://jefflowegallery.com/

For what it's worth, "Outre'" is no easy listening, it's a real challenge and certainly not for the weak at heart, but once (/if!) the mood for evil sounds is upon you, this album is sure to grow on you. I guess the best mark would be 8; it's not easy to succed in making an album which is both extreme and different from what has been tried before.

8/10

Samyaza

Label: Profound Lore Records

Line-up:

"Orchestroutre'
The Curator - Vocal Chords, Pulpit Forecaster Dictatorship (Vocals)
Horror Illogium - Seven Deadly Sinews Of Enigmatic Trauma (Guitar)
Aphotic Mote - Seven Maudlin Cacophonic Infrastructure (Rhythm guitar)
Elsewhere - Writhin Undertow Omnitidings & Rift Monocular - The Hands Of Time (Bass)
Monocular - Session Drums

Tracklist:

Moil
Abysmill
Heirships
Omnipotent Crawling Chaos
Black Houses
Outre
13 Globes
Sourlows