The elusive pursuit of the truly original is something that binds much modern music, and death metal, for all it's supposed extremities, perversities and anti-mainstream posturing, is no less bound to all too common forms and modes. Thank the multifarious Dark Lords then, for Australia's Portal. It's Death Metal Jim, but not (quite) as we know it...
This is album number three for the faceless ones, and despite a somewhat 'improved' sonic fidelity, this remains a dense, churning, cacophonous maelstrom of a record that ticks the same boxes as previous full lengths 'Outre' and 'Seepia'. Themes of cryptic Lovecraftian menace combined with crawling, creeping passages, skittering drums like miniature tornados; riffs of technical yet unconventional atonal savagery; roaring vocals lurking in the mix courtesy of the grandfather clock-headed Curator. There are a couple of moments where hideous bastardized travesties of melody rear their heads, like deformed children's songs ('Writhen' and the album highlight 'Omenknow'), and there seems to be less of the 'black ambience' that characterized their previous outing. Essentially what Portak have done on 'Swarth' is to 'streamline' their sound, to refine their ghoulish outre. Whether they eventually make the leap into truly uncharted territory, melding their horror-drenched crawl with some new stygian dynamic, remains to be seen. But for now, no-one out there sounds quite like them.
85%
No comments:
Post a Comment