Portal of Sorrow

Up to this point, Xasthur had released eight albums, counting the "A Gate Through Bloodstained Mirrors", which ranged from good to absolutely mind-blowing. A year before this album came out, we were treated to "All Reflections Drained". That album was, up until now, Xasthur's worst release in my opinion. However, it is still a good album nonetheless. Fast forward to 2010, and we get the swansong album (at the time) from Malefic, entitled "Portal of Sorrow". This album stylistically is similar to what he was doing on his previous albums, but there are some major flaws that on this album, stick out like a sore thumb.

The guitars are standard for Xasthur, and are presented in a very distorted fashion. They seem to be more muddy on this album, however, and are comparatively quiet and drowned in the mix. One of the key features with Xasthur's atmosphere was the wall of sound created by the guitars. This is a very quiet album overall, and the guitars and keyboards share the spotlight, although that spotlight is very dim. "Stream of Subconsciousness" contains some of the most beautiful guitar work, but it is so darned quiet and muddy that it really doesn't add much to the atmosphere. The most depressing moment on the album is probably the album's closing track "Hiver de Glace", and unfortunately, that is just a two minute outro track comprised completely of keyboards. One of the worst moments on the album is that awkward bass in "Shrine of Failure". It sounds hilarious, for lack of a better term. There is a pretty neat guitar solo in this track, but that's really all this song has going for it, and it really just turns out to sound like a joke.

Vocally, Malefic still sounds pretty good, but this production job does not do them justice. This sad screams of torment are still there, but like the guitars, they do suffer a bit. They are offensively quiet and are way too distant in the mix. More often than not, he becomes so quiet that a lot of these songs even sound instrumental. There are some female vocals in tracks such as the aforementioned "Stream of Subconsciousness" and "Released from This Earth". This inclusion of sorrowful, beautiful female vocals is one of the album's saving graces.

The absolute worst aspect of this album is the drumming. Malefic uses an acoustic drum kit as opposed to a drum machine, and at this point, this is not a new implementation in Xasthur's music. He has done this on the two previous albums as well, and while his drumming is fairly simple in nature, he is not a horrible drummer. A lot of DSBM does not require extremely technical drumming, and his skill fits the music well enough. However, on "Portal of Sorrow", it seems Malefic was on some type of drug or something when he recorded these drums. Right away, on the album's first track, we are treated to some horrendously off-time, sloppy drums. These are some of the most awkward sounding drums I have ever heard on a proper full-length studio album. On "Portal of Sorrow", it seems Malefic simply cannot stay in time and play efficient drum lines, which really drags this album down.

While not a horrible album, "Portal of Sorrow" is especially below average, especially for a high profile black metal band such as Xasthur. It could have been a much better album, however, it is what it is. I'll take any of his previous albums over this one.

Now, I don’t know many metal heads who have NEVER heard of Xasthur. But in any case, Xasthur is a Depressive Black Metal (DSBM for short) band from Alhambra, California which started back in 1999, a one man band from the mind of a being by the name of Malefic. Portal of Sorrow is the 8th and final full length album as Malefic decided to end Xasthur to pursue acoustic music instead.

Upon first listening to this album, the very first thing I took note of is how much the drums are in the background compared to the rest of the instruments being played. They are still audible, simple, and get the job done, but then again Xasthur isn’t known for amazing drum work but it sounds as if Malefic purposely sort of buried the drums to make the sound effects come first. As the record progress on, my eyes were opened wide from hearing the heavy and very extensive keyboard effects and organ playing, there is even some piano to be found if I am not mistaken.

Malefic also doesn’t seem to sing a lot, possibly to make more room for the various sounds and female vocals, which are very haunting but quite graceful. The bass is hard to make out at times for me which is a little saddening to be honest. Though electric and acoustic guitar playing is present, I would say it is fairly justifiable that Malefic wanted to hold back on ‘regular’ instrumentation and ‘traditional’ songwriting and instead, going with a MUCH different direction on this album. And the end result was being much more about creating a chilling funeral atmosphere with the heavy keyboards and organ, making this probably the most non-Xasthur album while still being Xasthur at its core with its infamous haunting themes of depression, suicide, despair, and astral projections. Overall, I really enjoyed listening to this; it was nothing like what I would have expected from the newest and last Xasthur album, but definitely a rather interesting and intriguing way to end the band.

HIGHLIGHTS: Portal of Sorrow, This Abyss Holds The Mirror, Released From This Earth, The Dying Light, Hiver De Glace.

If nothing else, let’s give Xasthur credit for being consistent. Xasthur has manged to get worse with each release. In 2002, Xasthur released an excellent album called “Nocturnal Poisoning”. Dense recording techniques gave the album a boxed in sound; packing guitars, keys and vocals atop one another. The culminating sensation was like being stuck in a nightmare and knowing it’s not real, but being unable to wake. A plethora of eerie melodies and unpredictable song structures drove home the otherworldly aesthetic. The album was a promising start to Xasthur's career.

The next album, “Funeral of Being” was good, but inconsistent. The next two albums were redundant and unoriginal, though they still had their moments. The next three albums were poorly composed, full of weak melodies and uninspired. “Portal of Sorrow”, the final Xasthur album, somehow manages to reach a new low, failing in almost every respect possible.

I assume the goal of the album is to create a dark, depressing world in which the listener is forced to face his or her ultimate and inevitable demise (that’s basically the goal of every Xasthur album). However, the album rarely comes close to achieving such a profound effect. “Portal of Sorrow” is a dull and draining tour through a series of poorly composed and even more poorly executed ambient black metal songs.

To begin, the production on the album is awful. The instruments are terribly mixed. It takes a major effort to distinguish anything other than the keyboards and the female vocals. Malefic’s screams (which can be quite powerful) are indiscernible as they are regulated to the outer limit of the recording. When you can discern the instruments, the musicianship is atrocious. The guitars are sloppy and the drums cannot even stay in rhythm. Why Malefic didn’t just opt for a drum machine is beyond me. He clearly doesn’t know how to play drums.

The songwriting is also poor. The songs basically are composed of one or two spooky melodies repeated for 2-5 minutes. With the exception of “Stream of Subconscious” the songs lack any sort of development and fail to create any tensions that might captivate the listener. Furthermore, the melodies are either terribly corny or flat out dull. At least the former are good for a laugh. The cheesy piano line in “Broken Glass Christening” and the goofy bass line in aptly named “Shrine of Failure” conjure images of buck-toothed vampires and toilet paper mummies getting ready to do the monster mash. I must admit, seeing an artist fail so profoundly to achieve his pretentious goal is quite entertaining. Unfortunately, the comically cheesy moments are greatly outweighed by innocuous passages of uninspired ambiance.

It is only fair to mention the one song that is actually quite moving. The aforementioned “Stream of Subconscious” is a dynamic song, in which a hopeful desire for transcendence is contrasted with somber sense of resignation at one's own finite nature. The melody is hymn like, and the synths and female vocals create sense unquenchable yearning. That said one song simply is not enough to redeem an otherwise terrible album.

Thus ends the long and painful descent of Xasthur. When I first heard “Nocturnal Poisoning” in 2002 I never would have guessed the Xasthur would become such a complete and utter laughing stock. Somehow Malefic has managed to regress not only as a songwriter (that isn’t too uncommon) but also as a musician! Like a person who has spent years suffering from an illness that should have killed them long ago, Xasthur needed to end. With Malefic’s obsession self-destruction and suicide, it’s too bad he didn’t euthanize Xasthur years ago.

(Originally written http://listenwell-nocturnal.blogspot.com)

At first, the atmospheric sound of the guitars, synths/strings, and vocals sounds dark and haunting. By the second track, it drones on, getting more and more monotonous as the album continues. Though the instruments aren't repeating themselves from track to track, there isn't enough variation in style to make it feel like they are not, and the album drags on and on.

Up front and foremost may be the synths - strings, choirs, keyboards - mostly very clean and ethereal sounding. Other than the drone-like repetition, these in themselves aren't too bad, but they simply don't work with the rest. The female vocals echo that ethereal quality to an extent, but they never lead the music anywhere, they don't come up front, they don't shine.

The rest of the sounds are completely different, contrasting these damp, ethereal sounds with muffled performance and production that seems intentionally bad, like it was played from a tape player in the background while the synths and vocals were recorded.

The growled/screamed vocals are extremely muffled and distant-sounding, recorded very poorly, sounding like an entirely different recording. These vocals could sound pretty cool if they appeared on a different recording with less differing clarity. The drums are up front at times, sounding raw and loud, while at other times they are completely muffled, sounding like they were recorded from another room. The drumming is horribly amateur, going off-time throughout the album and being rough all around, never locking in with anything else or giving a vague sense of rhythm that nothing else followed.

The guitars could be the worst part. There is hardly a coherent guitar riff on the album, and the playing is very lackluster. The tone is distant and soulless, it hardly has any qualities to characterize it - some distortion, softened by the weak recording and low volume in the mix, reverberated to make it audible over the synths. The guitar plays such a weak role in the music that I would not call it metal. There are a few tracks where this is quite different, when the guitar has a fuzzy, crunchy, biting, more like standard black metal. These tracks are nothing new nor particularly interesting.

This music reminds me of old horror-themed video game music with updated synthesizers and sloppy musicianship. This, along with the ethereal ambiance, provides some novelty and listening value that wears off pretty quickly. Xasthur's final effort did not impress me, nor inspire me to listen to anything else this guy has done, nor have I become interesting in checking out this sub-sub-genre of "depressive suicidal black metal". If I was 15 years into a musical endeavor and couldn't play along to a metronome, I suppose I would be both depressed and suicidal.

It would be funny to gather a bunch of music fans and ask them to write down what kind of ideas or images pop up in their heads as they listen to the career ending offering by Xasthur Portal of Sorrow. I would bet my left testicle that more than half of the participants would include words like; ‘castle’, ‘cobwebs’, ‘hot wax’, ‘candles’, ‘bad make up’, ‘ruffles’, ‘baggy’, 'red wine in a box’, ‘sad dude in a piano’, ‘bad witch’, ‘good witch’, ‘Chihuahua’, ‘magic mirror’, and ‘ghostly dancer’. Childish as this may sound, this does not begin to describe the ‘what the fuck’ reaction that tunes like the absurdly titled “The Abyss Holds the Mirror” elicit.

The song’s lead role is played by Marissa Nadler who takes the lead and apparently plays the part of a sexy ghost with dusty opera dreams. Nothing wrong with that but couldn’t have Malefic picked a better supporting role than a fucking toad? Croaking his way through the song, what we assume is his own phlegm-filled pipes, resemble a subtle burp. Either that or imagine how a frog with a top hat and a mike would sound like. For reals. Church organ, occasional heavy guitars and sloppy drums round out one of the outstanding tracks of Portal of Sorrow. Unfortunately, it is not outstanding for the right reasons. This sounds like gothic rock for subhumans and reptiles. Some may take that as a compliment, but it is not.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Malefic, the only human behind Xasthur, has been crafting his own version of black metal since he was inspired by Graveland and Burzum somewhere around the first half of the 90’s. In a way he is an original in an ocean of imitators. The fact that he carved a personal and unorthodox BM-inspired sound shall be admired. And the fact that he has stuck to his guns and fifteen years later has not veered off far from his original bizarre ideas shall be admired even more. But the fact that after all these years of playing has (apparently) not resulted in progress in musicianship should not. And it surprises because his ideas deserve a better treatment.

Just because Xasthur embraces lo fi aesthetics does not mean that we have to endure such minimal effort as the one displayed here. The musicianship is at times amateurish and at others sophomoric. Worst of all are the drums; just awful. Awkward and sloppy. This is begiiner's level. And the predominance of church organ and clear string arrangements is a bit cheesy and bound to be loved by germans.

In most occasions, when artists embrace lo fidelity they do so because of two reasons; to justify their limited musical abilities and to apologize in advance for the poor quality sound. Smart artists know how to balance the two and as they bring in new elements into their music they are sometimes forced to adapt their recordings to match the results. In other words, if you are going to have Marissa Nadler sing ghostly and gothic through the whole album and you are going to push forward minimal organ notes, and include clear string arrangements, plus black metal screams, and the occasional oblique riffage, then why not put a little effort in the execution and the production. It's a shame, especially considering that Portal of Sorrow is the last Xasthur release ever.

(Originally writen for http://www.deafsparrow.com)

It was probably inevitable that a musician so disenchanted with the status quo, so at odds with the living as Malefic (Scott Conner) would choose a finite period in which to vent his opaque nightmares to the audio obsessed, and thus the fact that he has stamped Portal of Sorrow as the final Xasthur full-length of that particular entity was not a surprise. Judging from the general quality of his prior efforts, which ranged from sobering and curious to downright suicidally indulgent, I could only have hoped that this belabored swan song would channel the same hazy, wondrous specters as prior issues. Sadly, this is not the case, and despite its variation and interesting atmospheric motifs, Portal of Sorrow is perhaps the least engrossing of his albums, though the 14 tracks do conceal a few priority gems.

The sultry, sickening despair is inaugurated with the roiling clean guitars of the instrumental title track, flecked with twisted ambiance and funeral organs that provide an early burial for this once prolific cellar dweller. "Broken Glass Christening" cycles back to familiar territory, the ghostlike strains of disgusting, repressed black metal painted with Malefic's tortured screaming, low piano keys central in the mix while ethereal, feminine choirs half-haunt the landscape. "Shrine of Failure" continues the grim portrait with aimless shredded guitars over echoing spoken words and coiled dissonance, and while this is sort of piece is not a great distance from his major works like the stunning All Reflections Drained, it just lacks anything truly gripping. The female vocals return for "Stream of Subconsciousness", one of the album's most accessible pieces, and it works rather well with the sad guitar lines and mumble jumbled vitriol in the background, proving that not all hope is lost as we mine deeper into the wealth of tracks.

"Karma/Death" is another winner, a fibrous, writhing serpent of fuzzy melodic glaze, and I also enjoyed the more ambient driven "Horizon of Plastic Caskets", or the funeral black doom of "This Abyss Holds the Mirror" with its more guttural vocal qualities, but there are a number of forgettable shorter instrumental segments like "Mesmerized by Misery" or the lush but empty tranquility of "Mourning Tomorrow" that serve to break the woeful climate. Of the later tracks, "Released from This Earth" is notable for the scarce balance of the pianos, eerie female vocals and thick, oozing bass, "The Darkest Light" being a very familiar approach for Xasthur that could be found on a number of the albums, but in all there seems an inconsistency, a disconnect to the usual disconnect which makes Conner's albums so engrossing.

There are plenty who won't bat an eyelid at the disappearance of this project, as Conner has long suffered and thrived in a love/hate relationship with black metal fans of all edicts, but I feel like he's made the right decision. Personally, I've slowly developed a fondness for a number of the Xasthur works, but I'm not sure where else there would be to go for this particular entity, and I can hear in Portal of Sorrow exactly why Malefic has become so disenchanted with this path. This is not the worst of albums to leave us on, and to be accurate it's got most of the oppressive characteristics common to his releases, but it just doesn't feel quite so dark. It's almost as if the album itself were exhausted, just trying to sluggishly gesture itself through an hour's playtime, and I never felt as lost in labyrinthine caverns of regret as I did in past years listening through his music. That's not to imply this is 'happy', because it is truly not, but I turn towards this man's music to feel drugged, shaken and truly fucked, not drugged, vapid dulled, and Portal of Sorrow is just too often guilty of the latter.

-autothrall
http://www.fromthedustreturned.com

“The Funeral of Being” was the first Xasthur album I’ve ever heard. Its very cold and raw production, minimalist-style riffs, and of course, the ill-sounding shrieks are all heard here, and a lot of these things are very suitable for a depressive-suicidal black metal. Now, Malefic (aka Scott Conner) made his last effort as Xasthur, entitled “Portal of Sorrow”, and this review exists since I also want to see what has changed since the DSBM landmark “The Funeral of Being”.

The production will be okay for a black metal album if not for the raspy vocals, which definitely sounded like an atmosphere additive due to its very poor production. That makes this album sound like an instrumental one. Another thing here is that the riffs and the bass are oftentimes unheard as instruments (more often heard as the album’s overall atmosphere), though this kind of production is seen ever since on Xasthur’s songs. Meanwhile, the drums are kept simple (though not as what you hear on emo bands), steady and, most of all, very efficient. If there’s one thing I like about the band, it’s that Malefic is excellent at showing (more like flaunting) his albums’ overall emotions, which is mostly anger, suicide and depression, but this album shows no exasperating force whatsoever (unlike Xasthur’s sophomore album, which effectively combines an infuriating speed with a depressive-suicidal atmosphere), making it sound like ambient black metal. Still, Malefic effectively presented the sense of depression and suicide throughout in an eerie way.

Generally, the album’s atmosphere is somewhat unique and, of course (our main word for this review) depressing. The music has its highlights and moments; set aside the poor vocal production (and also, the lack of it). Unfortunately, the album is quite hare to appreciate, even for myself, for its very fatal flaw regarding the vocals. I could say that the album is just fair enough for a depression, but not worthwhile for suicide, although you really won’t hear a lot of bands doing DSBM since they rarely get attention from metal magazines. If you really want suicidal Xasthur, you might want to look at his early works. Well, so long of Xasthur, I guess.

Originally made for http://mystifymyserie.blogspot.com

It's been several years since I heard Xasthur's first album "Nocturnal Poisoning" and on hearing the news that "Portal of Sorrow" represents Scott Conner's termination of the Xasthur project, I thought it was time to revisit Xasthur on this last major recording and see how far it has come. I haven't investigated any of the music Xasthur has released between these albums as opinions I've come across about the various releases have been mixed and the impression I got was that Xasthur was not budging far from its particular style of black metal with the result that most albums sounded much the same. Well the Xasthur project must have progressed a bit with "Portal of Sorrow": Conner has invited fellow American Marissa Nadler to collaborate on several tracks here. The contributions of this singer / guitarist, who herself has released a number of Gothic or dark folk solo albums, add a full-bodied, sensuous dimension to Xasthur's music, especially to the dreamy title track which leads off the album not only in track order but in the general musical style which tends strongly towards a dark ambient or Gothic melodic direction away from black metal to the extent that probably just over half the album is atmospheric or at least non-BM in sound. On some songs only Conner's blurry vocals which have a curious flat watery quality are all that might indicate a black metal presence.

The slight crisp edge that I recall from "Nocturnal Poisoning" isn't so much in evidence here - in its place a softer, more lush sound which does allow for a slight sharpness in the electric guitars and percussion and sometimes in Conner's screams, but this variation points up the multi-textured nature of the music with its many contrasts. Nadler's gentle angelic (and sometimes ghostly) voices and Conner's black metal vocals which range from deep croaky utterances and mutterings to thin anguished cries couldn't be more different from each other if they tried harder. Organ, synthesised violins and brass, some piano and acoustic guitar move in and out of the music smoothly, yet for all the complex instrumentation that appears here, the album does not sound at all busy or overloaded with sounds or melodies. There always seems to be plenty of space in the music and the tracks don't usually linger for long. This may be something to do with the actual structure of the songs which, to be frank, is excessively repetitive and unchanging to the point where they are no more than repeating loops and sound like excerpts from longer pieces. If you hear the album as one complete work in itself and treat the songs as chapters in the music, this isn't such a problem though there's the danger of monotony and boredom; but listeners who like to hear definite individual songs that are self-contained enough to be heard on their own will be disappointed. Possibly the album might have worked better overall if some of the 14 tracks had been combined into longer works with linking melodies and riffs that appear and repeat at critical points in the music, or if the music in one track just bled straight into the next piece..

Actual black metal when it does appear ranges from minimal and not very raw in sound, to just on the melodic side. It's not usually very upfront in most tracks and tends to provide a background or foundation over which other sounds and singing appear. The depressive black metal style is reinforced by the dark ambient music, Nadler's soft dream-like crooning, the soft production and the track titles, all dwelling on the edge of conscious feeling and thinking, before which the huge unknowable dimensions that can only be penetrated by death or by the unconscious mind during sleep loom.

I quite like the album for its alien washed-out atmosphere and strange sounds, and while the music is vague and lacking in definite structure, it does suit the general theme of the album as straddling the divide between the material world and consciousness on the one hand, and another plane of being / non-being that is accessible only through the release of consciousness. As mentioned before though, the album could have been better if some tracks were more definite in their structure with more conclusive endings or just faded into the tracks following after, rather than just continuously looping over and over then stopping suddenly with a pause before the next song arrives. Repetition works well to induce listeners into a trance-like state but once that is achieved, another strategy becomes necessary to push the music onto the next level and maintain listener awareness and interest. The album as it is has its work cut out to keep listeners interested in the excessively repetitive music and after a while, strange sounds and atmospheres with interesting combinations of genres and instrumentation just aren't enough. A couple of pieces near the end, "Released from this Earth" and "The Darkest Light", representing the climax of the entire work, become more complex and more like what I feel much of the album could have been, though the joins in the music tend to be quite abrupt.

This is one swansong album that really could have been great. The atmosphere is there, the sounds are there, the combination of black metal with Gothic folk and near-orchestral music should be a winner, the music is not melodramatic or crowded with too much sound or melodies ... but the recording missed the mark.