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Portal: Outré

13/05/10 || Khlysty

“Parker slipped as the other three were plunging frenziedly over endless vistas of green-crusted rock to the boat, and Johansen swears he was swallowed up by an angle of masonry which shouldn’t have been there; an angle which was acute, but behaved as if it were obtuse.”

H.P. Lovecraft: “The Call Of Cthulhu”

Portal comes from Down Under and plays death metal. Their sound is extremely inaccessible, even by death metal standards. The songs avoid linear, or even logical progression and evolution, just as an alkie avoids water. The recording and production is bizarre, to say the least, going for a hyper-saturated sound, with the guitars sounding like industrial-grade vacuum cleaners, the drums coming and going as they please in the mix and giving the impression of being recorded two mountaintops away and the vocals consist of a steady throaty half-growl, half-rasp that seems to fight to get up from the molasses-thick guitar-sludge. The songs are of indeterminate length, as they seem to melt into each other and they’re made up from “riffs” that are generally based on atonality and dissonance. This is a difficult listen, even for seasoned death metal aficionados and it’s a definite “no-no” for people with just a passing interest in the genre.

How did you like my “professional-style” review of Portal’s “Outré”? Did you like it? Hope so, ‘cause this is gonna be the last “normal” thing that you’ll find in this here review. See, I read somewhere that a guy, in letter sent to “The Guardian”, said that “without the proper critical instruments, both Wagner and Napalm Death sound shit”. And, you know what, he’s absofuckinglutely right. So, to avoid the pitfalls of using the wrong critical instruments to review this record, I resorted to good ole H.P. and his description of R’lyeh and its non-euclidean geometry. See, Portal plays death metal, but the go to it in a matter that defies every preconceived idea of what even “extremity” means to said genre, creating a maelstrom of sound that’s more impressionistic than “musical”. To make it simpler, Portal doesn’t so much care for technicality, riff progression, production etc, but for the overall effect that the sounds emanating from the disk will have on the listener.

And, oh, what sounds does the band make! From the subliminal horror that the instrumental intro “Moil” exudes, to the final strains and static noise of the seven-minutes-and-change cacophony of closer “Sourlows”, Portal goes for a musical style that on first listen sounds like “random death metal”; that is, riffs based around chords and/or arpeggios that aim to create the most dissonant sound possible, piled one upon the other, seemingly without care or logic. The drums seem to follow their own, totally independent track from what the guitars are doing. Pauses on the cacophony come and go without any rhyme or reason. The bass makes its presence obvious on a couple of times, but, generally speaking, seems to just add to the sludgy dissonance of the completely downtuned and compressed guitars. The vocals sound as if recorded inside a well and then treated with defective effects. Changes in scale, time signature and mood come and go seemingly as they please. To sum it up, on first listen “Outré” sounds like the mother of all headaches.

But, please, try not to stay on this first impression and give it up. If you pay attention, pretty soon you’ll find that amidst the chaos, there are certain juttings from where the listener can hold on. Little riffs that repeat themselves enough so as to constitute a “melody”. Slowdowns that allow breathing space, if only for a few seconds. Certain production choices –such as a half-submerged arpeggiated guitar or a blasting section from the drums- that provide points of reference within the chaotic nature of the songs. And, then, there’s the mood: an overall darkness, that seems to replicate in music the cosmic despair of Lovecraft’s more “hardcore” stories, where an unnameable and totally extra-human evil is on the threshold of reality, ready to irreversibly tear its fabric –and sanity- to little pitiful pieces and irrevocably change the rules of the physical world. Not in a good way. I tell you this: I don’t get scared from music, but after listening to “Outré” for a coupla times in a row, I felt, well, grimy by something, upon its existence I REALLY don’t wanna deal.

Bottom line is that “Outré” is the quintessential “difficult” album. After listening to it you cannot deal with it under the notion that, you know, it’s just five guys with guitars, drums, bass, amps and some microphones. The “music” seems to go a little deeper than what we’ve come to expect from death metal. Oh, it’s brutal, alright. Also, it displays interesting compositional ability and ideas from the band members. But, still, that’s forest for the trees shit. This is a record that sounds alien and evil in a way that’s not easily described through words. I hate to say it, but to fully understand what I’m talking about, you gotta taste it yourself. You might hate it and that’s understandable. But I wonder what would happen if –Cthulhu forbids…- you like it. Mood music for believers of the Great Old Ones? Headbanging material for ghouls? Well, if so, count me in… Fhtagn!!!

Information
Released: 2007
Label: Profound Lore
Website: www.portalabode.com
Band
The Curator: vocals
Horror Illogium: guitar
Aphotic Mote: guitar
Elsewhere: bass
Monocular: drums

Tracklist
01. Moil
02. Abysmill
03. Heirships
04. Omnipotent crawling chaos
05. Black houses
06. Outré
07. 13 globes
08. Sourlows

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