Outre'

The prime mistake of new listeners is listening to Portal like a death metal band. If you come to Outre' from the same perspective of Cryptopsy, Funebrarum, Sadistic Intent, or Carcass, then your'e going to be confused. The riff-centric focus of bands like that (or breakdowns in the case of Funebrarum) simply isn't there. Outre' is not music to pick apart frenetic solos or headbang in a pit. However, "atmospheric" is a reductive word, and it conjures up too many similarlties to limp "atmoblack" bands. Plus, "atmospheric" implies a decreased focus on technicality or songcraft - and Portal is absolutely a band not lacking in outright ability on wax (listen closely to "Heirships" and "13 Globes".

Instead, Outre' is better listened to as dark ambient. The (in?)famous production of Portal obfuscates what most people would consider the hallmarks of death metal. Guitars are not only muted but sound "smooshed" together, as if the delay of every strum bleeds one or two strums into the next. The drums are heavily mid-paced and tend to steadily thump on the snares and bass rather than the more thrash metal-based percussive patterns of much contemporary death metal. There's a distinctly dusty, filthy sound to this, like the clock-wearing frontman uneaarthed his headpiece from a manor untouched since the 1820s. And the moments that erupt into noise (and the title track certainly does erupt) are that much more powerful when compared to the sloggoth whirl before.

While the previous LP Seepia was not a stranger to decrepitude, Outre' sounds straight-up decayed. Like the first 95 seconds via "Moil", Outre' is a slow creep and the riffs begin before you know they're riffs. And it never really goes hard in the way of Morbid Angel or Portal's experimental brethren like Altarage - Outre' is a pretty restrained album, all things considered. "Abysmill" is more like a broil rather than a song, with the ending minute cycling (I originally wrote "psychling", which kinda fits) through an incandescent resolve as the drums clamber on. The drumming from Monocular (also known as Denny Blake) is utterly different from his work in StarGazer or Cauldron Black Ram. It's like his tempo anticipates the rest of the band, alternatingly slowing up and speeding down with the percussive equivalent of a musical slur. I like to think I listen to a lot of experimental music; Portal is the closest I've heard metal get to the hypothetical brown note.

This might sound like Portal isn't death metal, or it's "death metal for people who don't like death metal" - a statement that not a few genre fans loathe. Outre' is death metal - very much so - but its suffocating aesthetic is so far removed from what most people consider part of the genre. When this was released in 2007, the closest analogue to Outre' was Molested's Blod-draum, which used a similarly highly dense production with awkward melodies that lapsed into nightmarish folk passages. (It's no coincidence the 2009 remaster sounds far more insane, like they took a page straight from the Portal grimoire.) Nowadays, the Outre' sound is itself a typecast - see Antediluvian, Dire Omen, Altarage, Abyssal, Impetuous Ritual, Teitanblood, Grave Upheaval, Ulcerate, Grave Miasma - but Outre' is still pretty unique in using wall-of-sound for evil rather than good. And tracks are still recognizably different where lots of chaotic black/death easily bleeds together in 50+ minute runtime of 6+ minute songs; the 36 minute total of Outre' is a strong point in its favor.

When people think of Portal, they're usually thinking of Outre' - the dank, menacing production with which the band is now synonymous. Surreality, but not fun psychedelic dreamscapes - it's the kind of surreal that makes you queasy, like playing Hylics or having a caffeine headache while in stop-and-go traffic. While Portal's discography is almost uniformly experimental and dark, Outre' is actually a bit unique in its obscurity. If you don't like this but are still interested in Portal, then try out Seepia and ION. Both of these albums display the abstruse side of Portal a whole lot better, to the extent ION is almost like the anti-Outre' in its clarity.

Before I attempt to describe this music with as much detail as possible, I would encourage any curious listener out there to think of acquiring a teddy bear to hang onto during this aural experience that can only be described if by just one word as nightmarish. The tracks typically start off with abrupt bursts of brutal death metal energy before settling into a spontaneous hypnotic state of perpetual dread; like the torturous and endlessly circular squirming motions felt during a nightmare; somewhere between the writhing sensations of Immolation and later Morbid Angel with its low-tuned grueling riffs and triplet blast beats, and the influences here are fairly obvious although taken to a new extreme. Where both the latter bands may only be experimental within each different individual riff in songs that otherwise bear a sort of cohesiveness, Portal make it a point to extend the chaos way past the point of singular oddities and craft songs that are essentially aberrations in their entirety. There are no moments of rest or the faintest escape from the ongoing hallucinatory ordeal, no relent and no glimmer of hope. This is a deep, dark place, with every corner in sight barren and moribund, completely subterranean and oppressive - death metal seen through a lens of obsidian black and with no possible return from the terrible dream.

It's a vision of Hell perspiring an anguish too profound to even be interpreted at the surface like any other music. It seems to speak to the subconscious in hopes of awakening an innermost scorn for existence from the audience. It doesn't communicate in a way that most music does, that is immediately soliciting the listener's pleasure senses and making itself a consumable good for the greater metal public. Instead it pulls in the individual and imposes the challenge of looking deep inside one's self, in a most introspective effort to unlock tangible vistas dyed with personal experience that this may exchange with through abstract yet very real meaning. As to mirror the album cover, the music is colorless and dwells in a realm of monochromatic grotesque shapes, exaggerated and warped to elude meaning in its common structured approach, only highlighted by the delineating shadows for a twofold minimalist contrast of what is shown and its outlined perspective.

Musically, the guitar parts are soaked in constant dissonance whether on the steadier chord strum sections, on the lugubrious harmonized tremolo picking or on the more dramatic full chord outbreaks. What's particular to this album is it feels chaotic but with an odd feeling of steadiness simultaneously. The erratic dissonance and forceful drum work of largely blast beat variations seem to put the listener in a state of mild catalepsy, like an odd trance where one loses a good part of their perception from before playing the record and settles into this coma like experience. The riffing does actually get technical and highly active, and doesn't just focus on sheer texture, but the production being so intentionally lackluster and morose it doesn't exactly jump at the audience like a typical modern tech-death album from 2007 would. The tracks will also occasionally slow down and offer more ponderous doomier voids of terror (outros to 'Abysmill' and 'Black Houses'), like the band are taking the listener deeper down the rabbit hole.

The weird tracks are interspersed with even weirder short "instrumental" breaks if those can be referred to as that - the intro track being a good example for what to expect later. The vocals would remind one of Morbid Angel's Steve Tucker as they share a similar voice timbre, dense but screamy. The bass is present yet discreet, and will come to the foreground and add its metallic flavor on scarce occasions like the middle section in 'Globes', which is simply a flat-out atonally harmonized chromatic spiral down into oblivion, like a descent into one's own perdition.

The album finale and deliciously optimistically named 'Sourlows' showcases a little bit of that black metal/Deathspell Omega like atmospheric open chord picking at the start, appearing again at the end, before plunging right into Immolation type horrifying death metal turbulence; and as the album comes to a halt after 36 some minutes, the noisy musical dust from whence it came returns to guide the listener safely back to shore, where they'll happily find solid ground to lay their two feet on. Only problem is: the teddy bear has been ripped to pieces without realizing it and now the prospects of having to explain it to their sister dawns on them.

Annable Courts - http://antichristmagazine.com/review-portal-outre-profound-lore-records/

A friend of mine recommended me to listen to Portal. From what I gathered, they're an avant-garde death metal band from Australia. They have been acclaimed by fans and critics for pushing the boundaries of death metal. Outre' is considered to be Portal's breakthrough hit and quite possibly their magnum opus. Others have noted that Outre' sounds like a death metal equivalent to Deathspell Omega's FAS - Ite, maledicti, in ignem aeternum.

Having listened to the latter, I easily get the comparisons as leadoff tracks "Moil / Abysmill" are not your typical death metal songs. They're instead rather dense as the vocals and instruments create a wall of sound, making the songs difficult to listen to but more rewarding in the end. This is also true for "Black Houses" which has prominent death-doom influence and a section that reminds the listener of Neurosis' song "Purify". However, you still have songs that have more in line with technical death metal such as "Omnipotent Crawling Chaos" as the drums are more prominent here. Even the title track, which is an instrumental is some of the heaviest music in the metal genre rivaling the excellent "Pure II" by Godflesh.

Heaviness is the name of the game on Portal's Outre', as it has some of the tightest musicianship in terms of death metal albums. Horror Illogium and Aphotic Mote's guitars are not used for soloing, but instead for creating a droning sound to them that is possibly inspired by the likes of Earth and Godflesh. Unlike most death metal drummers, Monocular's drums are generally used for atmosphere on Outre'. The drum beats are perfectly placed throughout the album with no weak spots whatsoever. Monocular deserves special mention on "13 Globes" for some rather technical play. Elsewhere's bass may not be noticeable, however it blends perfectly with the wall of sound that is created by the two guitarists. "Black Houses" is a perfect example of this statement. As for the Curator, his vocals lie between Altars of Madness-era Morbid Angel and Close to a World Below-era Immolation. Curator's performance is relentless, his growls dictate the tempo of each song with the closing track "Sourlows" being the angriest number on Outre'.

Anger isn't really the driving factor when listening to Portal, especially Outre'. This is a death metal album that embodies the original purpose of metal: sheer heaviness. With tight production and a reliable label like Profound Lore, Outre' became the album that defined Portal's career. It is now a classic in the death metal genre with Decibel Magazine having notably included it in their Top 100 death metal albums list back in 2012. If you like your death metal to be technical with a touch of avant-garde metal in it, give Outre' a shot, it's a fantastic and well thought out record that deserves to be in any metalhead's collection.

Man, I just love band names that speak infinite precise volumes of what their music, sound and aesthetic all perpetuate around. Only a few bands pull this off, Brain Drill is the only one that I can pull from the top of my head right now, but Portal is another. This album actually feels like a portal has opened up in the vast dark sky and every fragment of the world is being pulled in while you grab onto debris and structures around you hanging on for dear life as the portal pulls with all its might to consume you along with the planet you exist on.

"Experimental death metal" would be the best description of the music Portal plays, but I'm also hearing a little bit of black metal influence as well. Across their albums, I found riffs that are even remotely similar to Plague Widow songs, so the black metal inspiration is present here, but at the same time, this band can be best described as death metal conducted by musical geniuses. There is so much sound here and it leaves the human ear to bask in its glorious wonder and leave so much to the imagination as to what's actually being experienced in the immense audial frenzy bestowed upon your speakers. A lot of the songs here don't even sound like they were constructed by human beings.

The last of the atmospheric songs (track 4; "Omnipotent Crawling Chaos") is also the song that sounds the most like a death metal song. Blast beats flood the record, but the riffs here shine and this song is an especially good asset that breaks up the monotony between the consistent sound everpresent. There even seems to be some bass guitar that rears in when you're keen enough to dig for it, and when you do you can essentially convince yourself that the bassist could be well conducting morse code through his notes.

This album / this band has really done a sound never conducted by a death metal band before. In many ways, it reminds me of Sunn O))) and Worship in terms of groundbreaking innovation and aesthetic. This is worth checking out if you're in the mood for a band that can create an interesting atmosphere. The only flaw is that argument that some may find this style of music boring, and I would agree it's definitely not something to listen to if you're seeking music to listen to for traditional death metal standards, but rather if you're seeking to bask yourself in a immense atmosphere of being sucked into a portal in the sky through the confides of audial art, then look no further.

Superlatives can be a big deal in metal. Throughout the 80s, much of the metal underground was driven by a need to be the fastest, the heaviest, the most evil, or the most extreme. But what about the scariest? Not in terms of lyrics, but in terms of the actual tone and atmosphere the music evokes. Well, Portal might not be from the 80s but it certainly has you covered if that's what you're looking for. This bizarre Australian group, without a doubt, sits on the non-Euclidean throne of frightening extreme metal in the midst of a bevy of supernatural entities that elude our puny human attempts to comprehend them and Outre' is certainly among the outfit's most unsettling efforts.

Portal's music isn't easy to describe, as no pre-existing label comes close to giving the right impression of what this stuff sounds like. Every element of the band's music, from the forboding production, to the barely audible vocals, is employed to make the music as spooky as possible. And it works. Underneath a shitload of fuzz, there lurk eight diabolical songs that, despite being rigidly structured, twist and shift throughout their runtimes, making the underlying logic they employ difficult to figure out. The production is arguably as crucial to this album's atmospheric success as any instrument because it blankets the music with a thick smog that makes the whole thing seem otherworldly. When you get a peek at the music through the murky packaging, you're met with frequent dissonance and weird effects with echo and reverb. The guitars are there, frequently wriggling like greased shoggoths out of one tempo and into another. The drums have a strong presence as well, employing short blast beats, moments of silence (while the rest of the music buzzes onward), and unpredictable shifts from one pattern to the next. The bass is typically lost in the mix but when it's noticeable, as it is on a dramatic break in ‘Sourlows’, it follows some eerie patterns that further augment the suffocating Lovecraftian horror this album so hatingly delivers.

The main issue here, as many of this band's detractors have said, is the fact that there aren't many memorable rhythms here (and almost all of them are contained in '13 Globes'). The album is essentially one long slab of atmosphere. While the coldness of said atmosphere and the feeling of dread it evokes are unforgettable, the same can't be said for the songs themselves. This ultimately isn't a big deal because catchy songs aren't what this group is about. That being said though, this release is still devoid of the sort of magnetism albums with more traditional and melodic content tend to have. You’ll never get a sudden urge to listen to 'Abysmill' and the rhythms in 'Black Houses' will never get stuck in your head. But if you want something with an atmosphere that will leave you cold, shivering, and worried that some malevolent, incomprehensible force is waiting somewhere just beyond your sight to come out and snatch you, nothing is more effective than Outre'.

Boo!

A lot of extreme metal can be utterly scary, but none are as horrific and twisted as Portal's Outre. Portal's Outre is probably the most horrific and horrifying metal album I have ever heard in my life. While Slayer's Hell Awaits, Morbid Angel's Altars of Madness, and Deicide's Legion are scary albums with their ancient tales of evil and satanism, this album makes those albums seem like Barney the dinosaur in comparison; this album is that utterly horrific. The cover of this album depicts what this album sounds like, the sound and feel of this music is like being trapped in a desert with absolutely nothing; you are dying slowly of thirst, starvation, and death is slowly swallowing you until your existence perishes forever into eternity. There is absolutely nothing scarier then the sound of this album with its ambient yet noisy soundscapes taking you to the darkest depths of torment and hell itself. I imagine this is the music they play in hell because it is that ominous and oppressive sounding.

The Curator possesses some of the most haunting sounding vocals ever put on record. His chants of Lovecraft and abstract horror bring the author's horrors into full light with nothing held back. His vocals resemble the vocalist from Asphyx as they are very dry and airy sounding. What separates The Curator though from standard death metal vocalists is his lyrical ability and his stage presence. I would say he gives Jeff Walker from Carcass a run for his money for most descriptive and heavy use of large vocabulary. He dresses in a costume that resembles a leader of an underground satanic cult, with a black robe covering his entire body, and very long nails. His grasp of vocabulary and Lovecraftian knowledge is impeccable. Reading some of these lyrics they are truly haunting and just out of this world. He doesn't delve into the gore territories brutal death metal bands or the satanic overtones of Deicide, instead his lyrics are so macabre and haunting that he makes other death metal vocalists seem friendly.

The guitar and bass work is phenomenal as well on this album. The guitars are like nothing I have ever heard on a death metal album. The riffs played here draw a lot of influence from drone metal, avant-garde metal, and black metal. The drone metal influence comes to mind because in the riffs displayed here I can hear a big Sunn O))) influence in the noisy and ambient styling of the riffs which are sometimes very slow and sometimes very fast with heavy use of diminished and augmented intervals. The avant-garde influence in the guitar riffs is heavily present as well. The later era Gorguts and Deathspell Omega sound is very persistent in Portal's music but far more horrifying and ominous. The two instrumental tracks on this album utilize not instruments but sound effects that are very chilling sounding and haunting to add to the atmosphere rather than give you a break from the macabre evil present on this album.

The greatest thing this album is able to do is create an atmosphere. There are many atmospheric death metal albums that are disturbing Incantation's Mortal Throne of Nazarene, Disembowelment's Transcendence into The Peripheral, but the atmosphere exhibited here is like taking a journey into the blackened abyss. The abyss swallows you whole leaving you lifeless and withering away as your final moments cease of existence. The blackened abyss only brings you further into suffering and despair where there is no hope, only blackness and pain. A pain so unbearable you wish to wither away quicker but if erodes you slowly and painfully. Nothing can compare to the atmosphere this album gives off. The Curator's chants add to the horror with lyrics so twisted and abstract, he makes other death metal bands seem warm and friendly. Evil and darkness is not avoided on this album, it is presented in the most macabre way imaginable. This album is not an album for easy listening, or to just bang your head like a lot of death metal (Cannibal Corpse,Deicide, Suffocation). Those bands have riffs that are uncomfortable but memorable and are very easy to head bang to. Here there are no memorable riffs that you can hum off the top of your head or melodies that will stick with you. Instead it focuses on macabre and horrific atmosphere which they achieved marvelously. This album is not for the squeamish. It will make you uncomfortable, frightened, and scared. If this album makes you feel that way it did its job and if it didn't (I can't see how it wouldn't) then you simply did not understand the context of this album. The one track that did stick out to me was Black Houses, the augmented chord that kicks in at the 2:38 mark is truly the epitome of disturbing. While that horrific chord strikes the listener unexpectedly, The Curator's throaty echoes chant "Seepia accord thee Stygian obsequious antipodes." Would I listen to this album on a regular basis? Absolutely not, but it did a marvelous job of creating such a horrific atmosphere I have to applaud these men for it. Go into this album expecting it to be scary and unwelcoming. That is one of the few recommendations I could give.

Highlight tracks: Abysmill, Black Houses, 13 globes

Imagine the technical brutality of Bloodthirsty-through-current-era Cannibal Corpse crossed with the impending doom and chaotic dirges of Immolation. Portal's brand of metal might very well be off-putting to many. This music is not melodic in the traditional sense, nor is it easy to take in for even the most veteran listeners, I'd assume. Outre, however, is not a traditional piece of music. All of the individual musical components combine into a product that is seething with an otherworldly, cosmic dissonance. Although some may deem this to not be listenable, there are many headbanging moments. This is serious metal music that demands something of the listener.

Outre (and I imagine all of its sister albums) brings to mind the imagery of ancient, unrelenting evil. This is what the Skeksis from Henson's The Dark Crystal would listen to if they were a little more badass. This is the soundtrack to our cosmic demise at the hands of Bioware's Reapers. To say that this is music from Hell would be missing the point. It is music from an altogether different dimension. Demilich... that's whom they bring to mind. Portal certainly has a tinge of Demilich's weirdness. The former is definitely more unsettling in my mind, though. The surreal album cover and 'drabness' of the music itself create an indomitable atmosphere. I find myself not as attracted to it as much much as it is dragging me into its gaping maw like light to a black hole.

Two words I find that accurately describe Outre are sung (or more accurately,expectorated) by The Curator himself: "transcendent, cosmivorous." The lyrics are interspersed with archaic and arcane sounding phrases. I feel that they are masterfully done in terms of what is being accomplished on this album, even though it's difficult to decipher them. They compel me to try and fail to comprehend what Portal is doing here and I think that's a plus for this album. That's the thing with Portal, this album feels like an ancient evil artifact lost in the eons only to be unearthed by an unwary people.

It is difficult to discuss the guitars, bass, and drums because there isn't a lot it can be compared to. At first, the drums may seem lacking and the guitars and bass too muddy and incongruous. That's what I thought upon first listen. As I presently hear this album, things are clicking and specific gears are moving in my head that are reacting to this toxic writhing mound of music. It commands the listener's attention. The distortion of the guitar is sharp yet it is also subdued. The riffs are played in a flurry of notes, seemingly in disarray, yet they are tight and focused. The bass and drums can be similarly described.

A final comparison on the off-chance a reader of Ursula LeGuin's work comes across this review (because I don't know what else to compare Outre to) is between this album and the second novel of the Earthsea series, The Tombs of Atuan. Briefly, a major setting of this novel is a underground, labyrinthine cavern where light is not permitted. Various rites are performed here and the only way the heroine navigates is by reaching into the dank, unfathomable darkness and feeling for different entrances and hallways, lest she wander in darkness until she withers and dies. That is how I feel listening to this album. Like I'm going to die alone in cold, black darkness.

I'll be quite frank; it can be a little difficult to sit through an entire listen of any album by Portal. This is not to say that I find the music bad or non-conducive to my tastes; I have no qualm with music that use elements of noise or are highly technical. However, the fact that this Austrailian death metal band is absolutely unrelenting in the way they barrage the listener with wave upon wave of dissonant noise and growling can wear thin even on the most seasoned listener. Maybe more interesting even for their weird-as-all-hell image and aesthetic than they are for the music itself, Portal are certainly a strange foe to contend with, but everything aside, going into Portal, one knows what they are getting into. This is a jarring listen, but for those who can cope with the noise, Portal's 'Outre' might be a refreshing kick in one's innards.

Downtuned riffs of likely jaw-dropping technicality are very often lost in an ocean of distortion and noise, but when they do peek through, it is easy to tell that the guitarists in the band can play their instruments exceedingly well; check out a live video of theirs to see what I mean. In there somewhere are drums, which do feel as if they could have done with a little more technicality, to match up with the furious guitars. Really, the only thing that manages to escape the noise are the vocals of The Curator, who churns out some of the weirdest lyrics one is bound to hear this side of The Mars Volta, but the vocal delivery does feel a little monotonous, relying on a single brand of grunt that works perfectly for the music.

While Portal may not sound too great from what has already been said, one thing they do nail down perfectly is atmosphere. Much death metal doesn't tend to evoke an honest feeling of dread in me, but Portal's noisy and dissonant expression will always at least make me feel uneasy while listening to it, in the most pleasant way of course. The problem possibly arises in the fact that Portal never changes up their sound, leaving only the breaks between songs for the listener to relax. With some sort of dynamic in their sound, 'Outre' could have seen Portal do quite a bit better. However, for the sake of their original sound and grasp of atmosphere, Portal may be worth checking out for someone with a very specific mood for noisy horror metal.

Most metal heads by now are familiar with Portal in some way or another. We've all heard one of two things; that they are the scariest thing since Satan himself, or that they are over-hyped. Many of the reviews here contain very relevant points on both sides of the spectrum, so I'm going to attempt to illuminate the recording with some largely unexplored points.

The first area that many notice is their aesthetic, contained both within their website and on the cover art of Outre'. They, without resorting to trite cliches or rehashed themes of evil and gore, have managed to make for a very creepy visage. The cover of this particular album reminds me of the strange vibe that made me most curious about extreme metal fifteen years ago. Their aesthetic vision is not only effective, but is a triumph for high art and horror, especially when considering the computer-age full of realistic violence that it is surrounded by.

But of course, their aesthetic sensibility does not make or break them as a metal band. Their foundation lay solidly with their guitar work, which is Portal's greatest strength. The guitars swirl and creep with a strange blend of terror and dementia that is as invitingly trance-inducing as it is bizarre and unsettling. In fact, the phrase 'maze of torment' seems to be quite fitting to the atmosphere produced here. In any case, it is this strange guitar which has catapulted them into the metal media limelight, this guitar which compelled my band-mates to sing their praises to me and this guitar which attempts to swallow the listener in a world of haze and uncertainty.

This has been properly addressed in other reviews, but it's worth reiterating the fact that the vocals do a nice job of reinforcing the bizarre atmosphere established by the guitar. The low rasps provide a drastic sense of ominous and bizarre terror, which is very well suited to both the aesthetics of the band and the musical composition.

Behind and below the disturbing guitars and vocals we have the drums, which is by far the weakest element on this album. The drum style (or lack thereof) is single-minded, straightforward and rather infantile. It's possible that this is meant to enhance the dementia established by the guitar, but I find that it diminishes it instead. It takes what could be a landslide of fear and turns it into a weak and formless mass. The drums have no character, no violence, nor urgent sense of chaos or any other sort of dynamic quality. Despite the use of blast beats, double bass and drum rolls, the drums seem only to follow the guitar and serve to orient the listener, rather than make a solid and distinct contribution to the overall experience. Now, when I say the drums are not dynamic, I'm not talking about the production either. They are produced organically, and mixed fairly low when compared to the guitar, which is relatively rare in death metal bands, but still serves to enhance the effectiveness of the atmosphere. When I speak of the lack of dynamics in the drumming, I am talking about the playing itself, which is remarkably bereft of originality.

Let's look at Incantation in comparison. They aren't good just because of John McEntee's bizarre riffs full of diminished intervals and semi-tones; they are good because Kyle Severn brings a separate sense of barbarism to the mix through his drumming. Together, they combine to form a heap of ugly and violent metal that is dire and disturbing at the least. Likewise, Deathspell Omega only achieves its dismal and mighty effect through the interaction of very dynamic instruments. If any of their recent albums had been released with nothing but rudimentary bathory-style beats, the guitars would still be amazing, but the album as a whole would be directionless and weak.

To conclude, if Portal's Outre' were a lifeform, it would be a kind of primordial worm; slimy, creeping and mindlessly consuming all that it engulfed. But also like a primordial worm, it has only a rudimentary and undeveloped spinal cord to give structure to its body, and as such, cannot move with much agility or ferocity. And though it slithers and creeps in a slightly menacing way, at the end of the day it's simply the kind of strange creature that you poke and prod with a stick, but nothing to be afraid of.

Browsing the forums on this fine website, I heard mention of this band, and decided to check them out. Finding that they were on Spotify, this was the first album I listened to, and is so far the only album of theirs I’ve listened to.

This is a very, very dark album. It’s not all that heavy - you couldn’t bang your head to this album. This is not the sort of death metal album you can fire on whilst you have your friends round to drink beer, or while you’re getting ready to go out to a box social on a Friday night. This is the sort of album you put on at 4:30am with the lights off. Or, going by the band’s lyrics, reading Lovecraft by candlelight.

Writing lyrics inspired by H. P. Lovecraft isn’t anything new in metal, but Portal might be the first band I’ve heard where the music itself sounds explicitly inspired by Lovecraft. In Lovecraft’s novelettes, there are bits where the unwitting protagonist reveals how he stumbled upon a dark ritual, where (usually brown skinned savages because Howard was a racist) chant unpronounceable names and offer sacrifices and all that jazz. Portal have apparently set out with the intent of creating music that sounds like those dark rituals.

And they’ve managed to pull it off fairly well. The Curator’s reverb-laden breathy growls sound like how I imagined those chants sounding. The music reminds me of Altars of Madness, if it were slowed down. The guitars are played with an imprecision that’s gotten rare in modern death metal, giving off the feeling that the band is more interested in the feeling and atmosphere given off than the actual notes they’re playing. The drums and bass aren’t terribly flash, keeping everything together and doing a decent job of it, with a few drum fills thrown into the faster moments. There isn’t a huge amount of diversity throughout the album - it begins with an obligatory dissonant electronic intro, some songs have faster sections (the title track is closer to regular death metal in this regard, before sounding a bit like God Of Emptiness by Morbid Angel), and there are a couple of electronic sections, but on the whole they stick to the really dark atmospheric sound. Fortunately, it’s not long enough to get really boring by the end of the album.

If you’re into slower, almost doomy atmospheric-as-fuck death metal, or just feel like listening to something that’s different without being weird for the sake of weird, you can do a lot worse than listening to Portal’s Outre. It’s not an amazing work of avant garde art that deserves people checking their thesaurus for the longest synonyms of “sinister” they can find to describe it, but it is an enjoyable, creepy, sinister death metal album that’s well worth a listen.

Brutal death metal is beyond parody, tech death is inarticulate and plastic, and the old-school is played out and redundant. Death metal could use a savior, we connoisseurs can agree, so when a group of weirdos show up wearing full Silent Hill regalia and sporting horror lyrics we are compelled to pay attention. Razorback bands have lyrics based on horror movies. Portal have lyrics based on horror literature. You see the difference? We brace ourselves for high art.

Portal are thus tasked with the tricky job of moving death metal forward into hitherto unimagined depths of darkness - but without compromising the genre's core aesthetics and integrity. That means that the guitars will not be catchy, they will not be brutal, and you will certainly not be encouraged to headbang or mosh to them - ideally they should make you want to hide under the covers, or at least scratch your head with uneasiness.

Take a moment to hammer your fist down on the rightmost keys of a piano. Those high-pitched, dissonant sounds are pretty unsettling, huh? Well, a lot more erudition can be brought to that general aesthetic, as we've found out over the course of 20th century composition and countless horror movies.

Black metal's ultra-scary wing has been dabbling with snakey, clanging guitar riffs for a while now... I'm thinking of stuff like Axis of Perdition and certainly many others, where the evilness increases, supposedly, with the entropy of the music. Portal are somewhat in that vein, perhaps more by way parallel evolution than lineage. Suppose you took some old Immolation or Morbid Angel tapes, chopped them up and stitched them back together, and then played them backwards, then tried to cover the resulting 'songs' on downtuned, heavily distorted guitars, with accompanying blast beats and breathy death growls. There's Portal. In seriousness, Portal are not quite that disjointed, but they seem to be aiming for it.

For intro and outro material, they indulge in the logical endpoint of this aesthetic; that is to say, ambient noise and industrial sounds. That's the other kind of scary music, besides dissonant scribbling... there are people who will tell you that it's darker than any metal, but evidently Portal find something unsatisfactory in it, or else they'd drop their instruments and just do that for half an hour, and spare themselves a lot of rehearsal time. Noise is dark enough, but it's also empty. Suffering for lack of apparent form, there's not much to come back to.

To some degree, that feels like a problem for the album writ large - Portal are good enough at taking metal apart, but only adequate when it comes to putting it back together again, and making coherence out of the chaos. I feel awkward to damn a good band with such faint praise, but they're aiming high enough to expose themselves to harsher demands from the listener, and I'll allow that I might be 'missing' something. That said, if you're into death metal, it’s worth a look. If nothing else, it's an attempted refutation of death metal's apparent dead ends.

One of the rare bands that the entire divided Australian metal underground hails in unison – Portal somehow managed to transcend scene bullshit. Their extreme, bizarre and undying musical prowess, I think is a decisive factor here.

This is their second full-length offering to the void, as their concerns seem to be wholly inhuman. And whist I am sure these guys have families, eat, drink, piss and shit like the rest of us mortals, their music is utterly outworldly. The style is basically rooted in Death Metal but the band takes it towards unexplored horizons that entirely invalidate any compartmentalisation of their work.

I think that fans of their first album will actually be slightly disappointed. Whilst unrelenting in sound and infidelity to their roots nowhere in sight, Portal deliver a different album to the style they started in on “Sepia”.

The first song “Abysmill” is a sure sign of this – introduced with crawling blastbeat and carefully sidestepping leads that from time to time let out bursts of obscene chaos. The drumming is a standout – uniquely abstracted and perfectly synchronized with the bass as the guitars wash over it all with nebulous phrasing and morbid down-tuned noise. I remember watching these guys live – the guitarists’ fingers ran scarily across the fret-board like pale, bald tarantulas, which is actually a lot more horrible than hairy tarantulas. What came out of their amplifiers was equally horrific.

What is great is that the Curator’s vocals remain the same dusty growl – quite unique in his genre and so intensely fitting the imagery created herein.

Track 6 “Outre” is a black ambient/power electronic composition that bursts into my ears suddenly. It is a new thing on a Portal album – it’s great to hear them do a serious piece in this style as opposed to an intro/outro type thing they have offered before. Here is the power of a full-studio production, that can make this sort of music sound so great.

The closing track on this “Sourlows” is really something else. Beginning with a fuzzy, obscure guitar phrase and rusty bell-like percussion the song proceeds into gloomy, doom territory. And then IT begins – horrific, black chaos that will remind one of the first album a bit more than the rest of this disk. This is probably the most abstract and fascinating track on the album – full of strange riffs and relentless, pounding rhythms that having passed me by descend into dark ambience once more. And then the album is no more.

In the end it is hard to really put it into words what this is like – one is best to experience it for themselves. Portal create obscure and unimaginably insane atmospheres and are a shining black light in the underground scene here.

Originally published in Procession of Black Doom zine #3

That of Australian Portal is one of the most lucid attempts to recreate primal chaos into a sound format. The band makes a limited recurring to the reiteration of verses which is typical of the song shape, preferring creating a sound current which goes through several sudden changes, though always keeping the same catacomb-like anguishing mood.

Their style is not too away from some more atmospheric genres like funeral doom or suicide black, but the approach of the band is way more extreme, and though the scores are often static and monolithic, the performance is always frenetic and disrupting, and often can recall the anguish sense made by the blackest Morbid Angel or by the latest Immolation.

But let's be clear, Portal are much less structured, not only if you consider the main scheme, but also considering the riffs: hardly you're going to find some intelligible scores (yet there are some, "13 Globes"), it's mostly a guitar playing which roams vagabond with no goal to pursue but imprisoning the listener into a desert of unrest, without any kind of references: and from this point of view the subdivision into songs in pointless. The non-structure of the songs reflects out through the drums scores, that instead of giving a shape to the extreme mass of the band prefers squirting mad in hiccups, and in the vocal interpretation, which is but a strangled humming.

Also the production fits this scheme, it is very lo-fi with the drum beats that hide behind a wall of smoke and the guitars, whose undoubted technical rate is merged within a muddy sound. Looking well is the same approach tried by Mayhem of "Ordo Ad Chao" and, partially, by Gorguts of "Obscura", even if we may mention even Fantomas, but for their ironic side. A courageous proof that deserved being reissued, and that will risk not to be understood...but effective anyway.

http://www.silentscreamzine.com/Home.asp?Lang=ENG

This band was advertised the most fucked up band ever to exist. “This is like Obscura after taking 3 hits of acid,” as my friend described them. Nothing of the sort. This is at best, slightly unconventional, inoffensive death metal, that brings Deathspell Omega to mind.

I was told that the guitars played the most mind bending and chaotic riffs ever to be created by human mind. (Some even said they weren’t created by human mind!) A friend of mine said it was ‘spacey and supernatural’ No. It’s not. It’s ambient droning that tries to create an atmosphere, but ultimately fails.

I was told that the drumming was super technical and not quite like anything I’d ever heard before. Lies. Since when is an entire song that is exclusively midpaced blast beating technical? The only interesting part about them was the intro solo to Omnipotent Crawling Chaos, and even then, that’s nothing that I couldn’t do.

I was told that the vocals were the weirdest ones that would ever find their way to my ears. Once again, untrue. They’re a raspy sort of growl. Unique. But keep in mind that unique isn’t always a compliment. These lack power and aggression, and he’s sort of just… talking in a harsh voice.

At no point in this did I comment to myself “Wow, this is fucking awesome,” like I did while listening to DsO the first time. Nor did I find myself actually pausing what I was doing and saying “What in the fuck am I listening to?” like with Obscura, now, granted, that isn’t the only criteria that I follow, but if I’m told that a band is fucked up, I want that band to be fucked up. This… is boring. Maybe it’s because I’m not high, but this is just lame. It attempts to create an eerie and supernatural atmosphere, but the atmospheric parts end up going nowhere, and just become stagnant piles of guitar feedback and poor riffing.

Now… The two redeeming factors. Firstly, the production. Nicely done. It’s got a sort of grainy, atmospheric feel to it, it’s well balanced and has a very good, all around.

Secondly, the song 13 Globes. Now this, THIS, is fucked up. THIS is the kind of thing I was expecting. Unorthodox, dissonant riffing, creepy atmosphere. All is well in here…. Until 3:00, when they ditch the two cool riffs on this album, and slow down, and try to be heavy. Fucking dammit, why? They had a good idea, and then they discarded it, when it was working well.

So, in conclusion, this is a waste of time. An uninteresting piece of stagnant guitar work, weak vocals and mediocre drumming. Don't bother.

EDIT: So, a friend of mine suggested I listen to it in a different setting. That sort of made a difference. This is the kind of album you listen to in a dark room, at 3 AM, while browsing /x/. This is not the sort of thing that you listen to at 3 PM, with the birds chirping, and sunlight pouring into the room. I'm still not a fan, though.

If there was one word to describe Portal it would be "unique". Actually, that's a rather mundane and ineffective way to explain their sound. I think instead I'm going to go with terms like "ghostly", "mindfuck", "utterly inhuman", "demented" and "unearthly". Portal is a band that walks that thin line between genius and insane. Their music is technical to the point of inducing epilepsy, their thick and disturbed atmosphere has yet to be matched by anyone and I sometimes wonder if they even have song-structures or if they just play random chaos instead of carefully thought out rhythms and time signatures. Add to this a stage presence and overall image that is utterly twisted and oddly horrifying, especially The Curator's eerie, face-covering Wizard's hat.

The first time that I heard Seepia I was really interested. They sounded like a way more chaotic and insane take on those rare bands that do tech-death in a really interesting way, like Demilich and Gorguts from Obscura on, mixed with really raw and brutal black metal like Blasphemy and Beherit. The production was raw but it added a very unique atmosphere and it gave it a kind of grating intensity that I wasn't used to. Then they followed this up with The Sweyy, which when you think about it is the perfect transition between Seepia and Outre. It was spastic like Seepia, with the first song being so utterly insane that it took me a few listens to release that every single hyperspeed, convoluted note in it was there on purpose. Despite this, it slowed things down a notch and focused a tad more on eerie atmosphere. Overall it was still Blasphemy meets Obscura, but something had changed. It wasn't as 'all over the place' as Seepia, as there was a lot more repetition...perhaps even too much of it. Who knows, maybe they took some Ritalin or something?

And now they put out 'Outre'. The first time I heard this album I thought it was a completely different band. After one of the scariest goddamned intros ever recorded they start off with a song that, on the surface, sounds like a stripped down Immolation with production so murky that it took me about a month to decipher the drummer's beats. Being as I was used to the hyper-technical, constantly time-changing mindfuck nonsense of Seepia this was a little bit disappointing. Nonetheless, the darkness of it was very interesting. Then it went on. As I got about half-way through the album Portal did it again, they confused the living hell out of me with music so insanely technical and diabolically evil that you practically have to be Herbert West to understand what the fuck is going on. But more importantly, this album has an atmosphere so thick and horrific that I'm pretty sure even The Grim Reaper himself would be afraid...very afraid!

Since you really have to listen to the full album I'm going to describe it song by song, as some people have done.

1.) Moil: I wonder what instruments they were using to record this. Though people have called this a noise track I think it sounds a lot more like some kind of utterly horrific and demented horror soundtrack. It fades in with a very simple, eerie background ambience but as it gets louder it degenerates into a chaotic, discordant and wailing orchestra of utter cosmic horror and insanity. Then it morphs into...

2.) Abysmill: As mentioned before, this starts off like Immolation slowed down to a snail's pace with a production so murky and horrific that you'd swear it was recorded in the 1920s. Then at catches you off guard by spiralling into complete and utter insanity at random points in the song. These fits of insanity are supported by a solid and pounding blastbeat. I love how the drummer goes from a plodded, horrific drudge to complete and utter fury while never losing control. The first riff is deceptively repetitive, but on repeat listenings you notice that the harmonies change and add very odd and disturbing emotional layers, adding elements of agony to the evil. After all the blastbeating and chaos, the song erupts into a free-flowing, spacey atmospheric section that builds a sense of wonder...reminding me of both Mithrash and Xasthur...before building up to one of the most diabolical but yet tear-inducingly beautiful riffs EVER WRITTEN. It sounds like an aeon old Tyrant is shedding a tear of joy because he has begun his reign of terror over all life for all eternity. This riff is a behemoth and the conflicting emotions that it raises are impossible to explain.

3.) Heirships: The song begins with a strange, electronic ambience before exploding into a mind-blowingly dark build-up. The rhythm of the first riff is chaotic but somehow controlled and it erupts with one of the strangest chords that you will ever hear. It sounds like some diabolical bell that is ringing. Then the real fun begins. When it starts blasting, it really starts blasting. The first 'brutal' riff is come kind of utterly horrific concoction of Xasthur, Morbid Angel and Autopsy on Mental Funeral only somehow more horrific and mangled beyond comprehension. Then the song takes a left turn and becomes one of the most horrifically morbid and disturbing songs that you will ever hear. The Curator's hollowed out voice bellows and moans in a soul damaging and commanding form. It really sounds as though he's calling out to you from the afterlife...and believe me, the afterlife is not a peaceful place. The song reeks of death, and as this section repeats with its incredibly strange beat in the background it only leads you into a downward spiral before ending off in an utterly confusing riff that seems to keep mutating as it goes along. The song then ends off with this riff slowed down to a doom like drudge, played on a lower end with more hollowed out vocals from the great beyond. Believe me, this song will give you chills.

4.) Omnipotent Crawling Chaos: This song is quite a change of pace from the ghastly nightmare that is the first three songs. As opposed to a low end, slow and eerie drudge, this song is more 'upbeat'. By upbeat I don't mean uplifting. I mean this: picture a procession of lunatics slobbering in glee as they worship their demented God. The song is played mainly with intense blastbeats and rhythms that remind me of what Hate Eternal sounded like if they had balls. That's not to say that the song doesn't break off into utter wierdness, but mainly it sounds like a very 'happy' celebration of some seriously horrific shit.

5.) Black Houses: This might sound like an exaggeration, but arguably this is the most horrific song ever written...of any genre. Or it's at least one of them. Starting off with what sounds like possibly three different riffs at the same time, Black Houses truly sounds as though it's being played by a horde of ghosts rather than a band. If a song could ever bring a person to tears just by being so horrific and utterly sinister, this would be it. This song is so twisted that it defies comprehension. The song structure is chaotic, yet slow enough to immerse you in an atmosphere of hopeless doom and sadistic torment. The riffs don't so much sound like typical riffs as they do sound like instruments of psychic torment. When The Curator's vocals kick in they wail as though they're caught in a void of anguish and spiritual deadness. The riffs churn and morph off into strange, nightmarish forms until they all arrive at arguably the most horrific and despondent chord that I have ever heard in music...ever. Whatever you do, prepare yourself for 2:38 in this song. It will damage you like it did to me. Then it ends off with a mindblowingly awesome chant where The Curator keeps shouting "VILLUS ECTO!" ad nauseum, before degenerating into a dreamlike and despondent final riff that offers some degree of relief from how fucking relentless this song is...but it's pretty bleak anyways so I guess it doesn't really.

6.) Outre: Another ambient track. This one doesn't sound as much like classical as it does sound like some horrific cross between Brighter Death Now and the soundtrack to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Add to this a disheartening and gloomy Lovecraft influenced atmosphere and you've got yourself a very special ambient track.

7.) 13 Globes: Talk about a good time! Much like Omnipotent Crawling Chaos this song is another demented love-note to those slimy Lovecraftian God-things that we all know and love. The riffs are completely off the hook, demented and dissonant yet cheerful in a truly disturbing way. It almost sounds like some kind of victory march for a malevolent and horrific and eternal military dictatorship. You see, these are the kinds of strange and disturbing mental images that this album brings to mind! Then, of course, it spirals into a complete chaos and starts to confuse the shit out of whoever is listening to it. Of course this is a good thing, afterall this IS Portal that we're listening to. The song soon becomes claustrophobic and filled with bizarre time signatures that jar the listener and rampantly assault their mind. The atmosphere of the song constantly shifts from an eerie dream-like vibe to brutal, blasting chaos.

8.) Sourlows: Four words...what the fucking shit? This song starts off with an incredibly twisted and eerie dissonant riff that reminds me of witches concocting some evil brew and conducting black magic rituals. There is an interesting and very disturbing bell or gong-like instrument that is used to emphasize the "really weird" note in it, that adds a lot to the atmosphere. And the drums come in...those brutal drums. The first few minutes of the song are really just a tense and confusing build up. Like the majority of the album, this song is all about building suspense. After the eerie, discordant and yet oddly HOPEFUL (!) build-up ends it just spirals into the most confusing, blasting chaos that will ever torment your ears. You will never understand it, neither will I. It's just utter lunacy. If you thought that Necrophagist and Wormed were technical, Portal has just effectively castrated both of those bands with this song. Probably my favourite thing about Sourlows is how incredibly brutal riffs are often interrupted out of nowhere with even more brutal riffs. And then the blasting stops and it gives way to the most nightmarish part of the entire album, other than Black Houses. Though it's got that 'triumphant evil' feel of some of the other songs, it often drags into infernal pits of despair. This is done mainly through The Curator's blackened bellow. He really does sound like he's calling for you from a void of eternal despair.

So there you have it! It's not as 'all over the place' as Seepia, and the production is murky as hell but it's probably the best death metal album that we're going to get for the next twenty years. There's never been anything like it. In addition to that, I'd like to say that this album translates Lovecraft better than any film has as of yet.

So if you like death metal, avant-garde insanity, horror and Lovecraft you'll be sorry if you don't check this album out.

Like everything Portal has done, this album is a conundrum. While it pushes their bizarre metal ethic further, it also seems more primitive and regressive than their previous material in some ways. My own reactions to it are conflicted. On one hand, I enjoy the utter uniqueness of it, but at the same time I can’t shake a lingering feeling of disappointment. It follows through on the promise of their earlier album “Seepia,” but then again, it doesn’t…

This time around, they really seem focused on atmosphere. The spacey flavor from “Seepia” is still there, but this time it takes a back seat to the atmosphere of strange antiquarian horror. I love the weird mythos surrounding the band--the masks, the witch’s hat, the way the vocalist will just stand there motionless in the middle of songs. There’s a ghostly quality to a lot of the songs on this album--they pass by like visitors from another world, never really coming to any resolution. The music is claustrophobic and expansive at the same time (another paradox), drawing the listener further and further into chaos. There’s a cosmic feeling to the music, but it’s also very personal and eccentric.

All the elements of the music are singular in their own way. The drums in particular are just bizarre. They’re often reduced to an unassuming pitter-patter in the background, and on first listen they sound like they’re not doing much of anything. But once you notice them, a whole new layer of complexity and strangeness opens up. Like the rest of the music, they’re primitive but somehow advanced at the same time. The bass is also used strangely, occasionally surfacing to provide a bit of subdued melody. The vocalist is great, not that different from a lot of other growlers, but somehow unique, adding another layer to the disorienting atmosphere.

The guitars are, of course, the dominating instrument here, and they’re no less eccentric than everything else. The riffs are probably very complex and technical, but are produced in some bizarre way so that everything blurs together into one mass of dissonant sound. The wash of noise is impressive and very unique, but ultimately frustrating. I would prefer to hear the notes/chords clearly, especially since a lot of the riffs sound very interesting. The lo-fi production fits the atmosphere the band are going for, but there have to be better ways of getting this across than downgrading the sound quality. It’s equivalent to dark lighting in horror movies--an easy trick to create mood. I hope Portal will eventually rise above these kinds of tricks…The music should be able to speak for itself, without relying on eccentric production. I also felt that the riffs of “Seepia” were more a little more interesting and complex. My favorite song on here is “12 Globes” since it breaks away a little bit from the relentless noise, and lets loose with some really nice discordant riffs. These complaints aside, this is one of the most interesting metal releases in recent memory.

This is one of the darkest, blackest things I've ever heard.

I'd never heard of Portal until flipping through a recent issue of Terrorizer and happened to see a witch hat and noose beside the bold words "WE ARE MENTAL SADISTS." I read the article and was intrigued and very excited to hear this album "Outre".

Moil: Silence. Fade in. Dissonant, chaotic classical music echoing under a thin film of white noise, only to be broken in the end by the tremolo picking of a severely distorted guitar. Perfect transition into...

Abysmill: Clever pun. I can't even properly describe how it sounds... Different production quality than I've heard before, noted especially on the drums. Very... acoustic sounding. Raw, but not thick or thin in a bad, low/ cheap sense. The vocals kick into this raunchy piece of art. Low, menacing growls croak out amazing lyrics. I mean it, look in the booklet. Their lyrics are intelligent... or show good use of a thesaurus. Who knows, they're dark, clever, vague, long words, simple lines and they work, damn it.

Heirships: Have you ever read Lovecraft? How eerie and creepy his writing gets, making you double check the shadows of the night and all that childish stuff? Portal is like that with music. This track is just as excellent as the one preceding it. Done, then...

Omnipotent Crawling Chaos: Nyarlathotep. Lovecraft. It gets so much better, somehow. I'm going to have to be blunt. This is just fucked up and I love it. The whole album flows so nicely and fits so perfectly (in an awful, inharmonious way, yeah, yeah), but it never gets boring. If you've ever read the short story "Nyarlathotep" by H.P. Lovecraft, you'll be able to fit this song in with the story, specifically the ending, easily. I could almost swear there was some sort of dark power around this song. It makes everything feel uneasy, it speaks, even when the vocals are absent. Yet, it rocks. It really is a crawling chaos.

Black Houses: God, would you listen to that riff... and how the drumming comes in. The intro alone is like some kind of kinky eargasm alone. But it doesn't stop. A new riff kicks in, and it is dark and, dare I say it- catchy. The vocals are much slower on this track, echoing words across this chaotic, bleak sound scape.

Outre: This one gave me goosebumps, made my hair slightly raise up a little... Static noise, eerie notes, an earful of chaos. Not pretentious in the slightest. I can really feel that these guys know what they're doing and they feel it as they do it. It's in them. This track is short, beautiful, horrible and lasts a lifetime. I just want to scream at the top of my lungs from the depths of some unknown internal pit along to this. They feel it, and they make you feel it, too.

13 Globes: The ambiance reverts back to the metal. I can't tell you how much I love these riffs. I don't really know what to say that I haven't already said. This track is excellent and original in its own way, though. Three quarters of the way through, it takes you on a journey, descending with a downward spiraling riff... Close to the bottom, a doomed, heavy riff kicks in and just fucks everything, in the best possible way.

Sourlows: You can tell this song will deliver, just by hearing the quiet, dissonant guitar riff repeating to the ambient dong that sounds like a grandfather clock of death. Words cannot describe the experience one gets listening to this. Just listen to that bass... This is it, this is the bottom. The fell hands of unseen things grasp you, bind you and pull you into the crushing darkness... the Portal.

It may take a certain type of person... maybe in a certain state and frame and mind set to appreciate this (I won't pretend I fully understand it), but take a chance. Buy it.

Moving further into uncharted territory with this release, Portal manage to fully incorporate ambient composition into their increasingly blackened brand of death metal. Their use of extreme dissonance resembles bands such as Averse Sefira and Immolation, but here it is taken one step further, allowing it free reign to guide the music through seemingly random yet subtly ingenious structures.

After a brief, disturbed intro which builds tension the music moves seamlessly into blasting dissonance; this build up without resolution in characteristic of this album, which utilises constant churning chaos without immediately recognisable structure to penetrate the darkest recesses of the listener’s subconscious. Drawn out tremolo picked melodies are repeated for long periods accompanied by the more usual highly dissonant technical riffs. The repetition is complemented by the increasingly ambient style of drumming, which now often resembles a black metal pulsing blast more than regular death metal drumming. These elements create a chaotic and atmospheric style, directly assaulting the listener’s perception.

The structures may alienate the average hessian at first because of their complete rejection of standard metal forms. They more closely resemble the droning dark ambient style of Raison D’Etre and Lustmord in their constant development and lack of cycles. Each riff is used and then discarded in the constant unrelenting chaos of this album, and multiple variations on themes ensure that these songs are not linear but more closely resemble the growth of a tree, with parts shooting off in every direction. This randomness is brutally penetrating; its surrealistic tendencies serve only to reflect the decaying nature of reality, communicating the seeming omnipotence of death.

Internally these songs are held together by melodic and rhythmic devices, which may allow some degree of familiarity for the listener. As a melody shifts a rhythmic idea remains constant, or melodic ideas are transposed to another riff with a different tempo. This gives each song a vague sense of continuity which was less developed on their previous album. As each song begins the chaos is gradually decoded to reveal a continuous narrative. These gradual rises and descents between chaos and order have no definite beginning and end as might be found in other metal, rather it seems they are in constant motion, this allows a great deal of freedom or the listener to find their own meaning within this maelstrom of dissonant harmony and ambient style song structure.

While this is without doubt a challenging listen, this album is relentlessly inventive and at times, beautiful. Beyond the immediate chaos there is a sense of order established that puts this release above most death metal, including their previous release which was semi-coherent. Portal are beginning to realise their potential and clearly display an ability to transcend the metal genre. This reviewer recommends that listeners become familiar with dark ambient music in order to gain a better understanding of this release.

Originally written for the Australian Nihilist Underground Society (www.anus.com/tribes/au)

This has got to be the darkest, most atmospheric death metal that i've ever heard. This record just sounds like a swarm of ghosts whizzing by you on a 666 lane freeway lost somewhere in the netherworld. Cold, breezy, swaying, tormented are all words I offer to help you attempt to forecast what a grim yet pleasurable listening experience this is.

Imagine what it would sound like if you took the 7-string Morbid Angel style of low sandblast style riffing, and blasted it through a giant turbo jet engine; yeah like those on a 747 Jumbo jet, added some dissonance ala Voivod, and let the contents stew for a couple centuries in the attic of the shunned house.

Comparing this to their previous work "Seepia", I would have to say that the production this time around is much more effective in terms of how each instrument effects the overall listening experience. The vocalist for example, has a very blowing, raspy, gruff style; so what happened is they turned him up to a scarifying level in the mix so this time it's like his brutal whispers are right in front of your face, instead of being slightly more subdued in the mix like previously. This however does not sacrifice the clarity or presence of the other instruments at all. The guitars sound like super dry cleaning machines from hell with spacecave reverb/echo effect number 5 added to the max. The bass player creeps out now and then and adds some morose sounding dimensions to the riffs, especially during slow passages in the songs. The production on the drum track however sounds rather dry, lifeless, and dull. This both serves as a positive and also a detriment to Outre's impact on the listener. On one hand, while the rest of the album sounds very spaced out sounding, the drums remain very dry to allow a contrasting presence to accentuate one another. On the other hand, had the drums been slightly enhanced with effects as the guitars seem to have been, then I might have been reviewing a sinful, perpetual eargasm of a record and not so much one that still sounds at least a bit human; notice how I stress the just a bit part.

Lyrically, this band deals with subject matter that's based around strange experiences within our realm of consciousness and subconsciousness. Primordial fears like a freezing fear of the dark and of contorted faces that come out of nowhere and speak to you the language that makes you regurgitate you mortality in exchange for a new knowledge that somwhere or at some time, something exists that is more than meets the eye of the jaded human.

If there is anything to compain about here it's the fact that Portal now sounds like it's found exactly the style and sound they've been after for quite a while now; but then it's over all too soon. At just around 38 minutes or so, this album definitely leaves you wanting oh so much more; but hey, that's still like 3 minutes longer than their last album "Seepia" was. Hopefully next time they will give us an even longer glimpse into the other side with like a 60 minute + concept album. If any band shows the potential to create a brilliant concept album with many different styles and tempos incorporated to tell an epic story it's Portal.

Another important thing to consider if you're interested in checking this out is that it is definitely not an easily accessible listen...at all. No catchy choruses or traditional hooks to be found here. I speculate that the reason for this is that Portal is going for something different here, something more artistically and aesthetically challenging for the listener than just your average run-of-the-mills death metal release. That's not to say that you won't grow extremely fond of certain parts of this album because I certainly did, you just have to give it some time and really sit down with it at first to really begin to understand it's artistic direction.

I strongly recommend this album to fans of Morbid Angel, Incantation, Inquisition, Xasthur, and Deathspell Omega. Hear how Portal is incorporating a truly dreadful feeling into the art of death metal music.