Posts Tagged ‘Portal’

D.R.I. DO DEATHFEST

Tuesday, December 15th, 2009 at 12:00pm by Axl Rosenberg

DRI

I barely remember the lost weekend I once spent in Baltimore. Was I bored, or just doing what I do? I dunno. I dunno.

Looks like I might be going back, though: D.R.I. have been added to the already stellar line-up of the 2010 edition of Maryland Deathfest. This is just the latest in a long line of good reasons to attend, not least of which is that it is, at least as far as I’m aware, currently the only scheduled U.S. appearance of Australia’s Portal, whose new album Swarth is currently frightening metalheads across the world. Throw in Converge, Magrudergrind, Entombed, Obituary, Watain, Melechesh, Jucifer, Gridlink, Gorod, 16, and a plethora of other awesome bands, and I think I could have a weekend in Baltimore even more lost than my last.

Get Maryland Deathfest’s complete line-up-to-date after the jump.

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PORTAL & IMPETUOUS RITUAL: SOUTH OF HELL

Tuesday, December 8th, 2009 at 1:00pm by Sammy O'Hagar

swarthrelentlessexecution

Australia, for those of us in the US, is pretty much literally on the other side of the world, and, like good Americans, we pick and choose what we want to know about it. The continent conjures up images of free range marsupials, shrimps and barbies with some throwing somewhere in there, Paul Hogan, and how, despite speaking English like us, “Fosters” is Australian for “beer” (and also terrible). If you’re a metal fan, AC/DC will come to mind, maybe blackened thrashers Destroyer 666, MAYBE moody basement black metal one-man project Striborg, and perhaps technical death upstarts Psycroptic (which would be inaccurate, as they’re from New Zealand). With an exception of AC/DC, though, they’re mostly bands that are proficient playing a Western/Northwestern hemisphere style, sometimes with slight tweaks to its DNA. A sound uniquely theirs, though, comes to mind when talking about “ambient death metal” titans Portal and their (relatively) straightforward side project Impetuous Ritual.

When it comes to death metal’s hallmarks – technical prowess, shocking gore-themed content, brutal riffs aplenty – they seem to be unraveling them and playing with the stuffing inside, reconstructing the genre into a truly unnerving and horrifying new beast altogether. Listening to Tomb of the Mutilated or Altars of Madness, then listening to Impetuous Ritual’s debut, Relentless Execution of Ceremonial Excrescence, and, especially, Portal’s new album, Swarth, leaves one thinking they couldn’t be any more foreign to what we know as death metal, just as their homeland couldn’t be any further south without being Antarctica. Suicide Silence and Oceano are a world away from this, and when modern death metal and deathcore are running the risk of becoming completely sterile and interchangeable, there couldn’t be a better circumstance.

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PORTAL: GLORIOUS, HIDEOUS NOISE FROM THE LAND DOWN UNDER

Thursday, October 22nd, 2009 at 3:00pm by Axl Rosenberg

Shame on me for having never heard of Australia’s Portal before. I just got their new album, Swarth (which apparently means “land covered with grassy turf”… metal teaches me a new word again!), last week, and it’s blowing my mind. I don’t even know how to describe it; it’s death metal, I guess, but it’s really pushing the limits of what “music” as a concept is. It almost reminds me of Hate Eternal, but that’s not really fair to Portal or Erik Rutan. They are just a really, really unique monster.

And I do mean “monster.” Like I said, this is really pushing the boundaries between music and noise. It’s just fucking evil, man. I’ll try to write a review one of these days, but in the meantime, I implore you to check out Portal on MySpace and buy Swarth for yourself – it just came out this week on Profound Lore.

And, oh yeah, apparently they wear costumes. Here they are doing the song “Glumurphonel” from their 2003 debut, Seepia.

For the time being it seems that Portal live shows are restricted to their native land, but they have been added to the already amazing Maryland Deathfest 2010 line-up, which will also include Converge, Eyehategod, Melechesh, Obituary, and grind gods Gridlink.

-AR