- Time to prepare myself by dusting off the trusty old thesaurus for what I’m about to embark on. The thesaurus as well as some emotional aftercare for when I’m done being confronted by PORTAL unleashing another set of ebullient, musical, mulched barrages. There is some misguided pride that is quickly extinguished when you learn the group are stated to be Australian. You and your hubris are swiftly crushed by an omnipresent force, and to me, that’s the most apt way of describing what PORTAL are above anything else. They’re a force intentionally shrouded by mythology, mystery, and lore. All their works prior to this have make you believe they’ve forgotten more about this world than we will ever know ourselves. This makes suspending your disbelief to buy into to this aesthetic moot on two fronts. The first being the group have no tangible attachment outside their compositions so you’ve no alternative but to accept it for what it is. Secondly, what’s been transmitted is so all consumingly dense, it simply outweighs any doubts you could possibly entertain.
Now, that’s not to imply Avow is a ham-fisted evocation of extreme-for-extreme's sake and a collection of dizzying riff salad. Yes, the down-tuned guitars inhabit this ugly territory where they make your skin crawl and the drums are so relentless your brain is shaken like a pane of glass in a North Queensland cyclone. Topped off with The Curator exhorting sermons over the chaos, it can seem disjointed and messy. In that space of incomprehension is where PORTAL come into their own and there is truly no group that sounds remotely similar.
Take the first few minutes of the record with it’s opener Catafalque. You are made uneasy, with ugly guitars grimly pushing you towards a peak, egged on by measured, slow building percussion. You’re conditioned to be given a joyous reprieve after such a construct but here it’s a launching point, a releasing force, an arrow from the bow. Tension is reinstated with a rapid fervour as tremolo guitars drag all along, hauling up and down the fretboard to fully instil a sense of palpable discomfort. From there, we’re slung swiftly into the gaze of Eye, and it’s here where the oration grows. Its presence was gravely felt on the opener but here The Curator imposes said presence with ever increasing gravity. Being unable to comprehend what is being espoused has been one of PORTAL's most cruel elements and here the dissociation between music and voice really gets under your skin. It is so far removed from reality it feels both like a faint, vicious whisper and, at the same time, a cavernous bellow from deep within. Our ears continue to be wilfully subjected to an onslaught as Offune begins an alarmingly calculated rhythmic beatdown. An underbelly of harsh noise barely audible under the surface helps in no small part to mull over the malaise. Manor of Speaking then straddles a strung out opening of dissonant chords, which it revisits at its close, returning sans percussion. Without a constant pelting of those beats, the discontented ambiance comes across as even more upsetting, This whips into Bode and indeed Drain before the two charge back with full force violence.
Although to describe what PORTAL sound like is a shade redundant as they churn through so much black and death metal with nauseating frequency and soak it in noise. What is a better approach is to focus on the feelings and reactions these compositions force upon you, because they are a force. The group’s own Horror Illogium eloquently phrases it better than I could ever dream of doing when they said “A force has no goal, no beginning or end, it simply exists.” And here we are, six transmissions in still being swept up and tossed around by the same force. There is no resisting.
- Matt Lynch.