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Portal "ION"


MacabreEternal

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One of my favourite urban myths is that you will go blind if you masterbate too much.  Listening to Portal might make you go blind as you ears frantically take resource from your brain that was needed for mundane tasks such as vision and bladder control as they try to cope with the relentless auditory assault of "ION", however pulling your pud won't affect your eyesight boys.  Science bit over, on with the review.

"ION" seems instantly more refined than previous outings.  Don't get me wrong here, there's no slick production values been applied and there isn't any venture into clean vocals for example.  It just seems that this time around things are more calculated.  "Phreqs" is like being attacked by a swarm of wasps, as chaotic as it seems there's some well thought out structure to the attack to maximise the impact.  One of the only criticisms I could draw against Portal of old was that sometimes the mental factor was up over 11 and things did tend to get lost.  "Vexovoid" remedied this a lot with its more "Horror" approach and "ION" seems to take that on a notch further combining dark alchemy and atmospheres perfectly.  The build of "Crone" for example is full of creeping dread and menace, finally arriving and proving to be as ghastly as I had hoped it would.

For all the scientific intimation of the cover things are still more on the experimental as opposed to technical side of death metal.  There's still that pit of the stomach sensation of being dragged into some fathomless void by the spiralling darkness of those fucking guitars and the taunting evil of those drums - they are not just about all out assault folks.  The layers do genuinely seem to be being applied with more structure this time around and the instrumentation is used better than ever to produce real atmosphere.  Favourite release of 2018 so far.

5 horns out 5

 

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One of the great emperor's new clothes bands when it comes to their live shows if you ask me.

I've seen them many times in Australia and the sound is literally a wall of noise with no discernible riffs or even notes. Just some guy with a clock around his neck gurning at the audience for 40 minutes while randoms create fuzz on their instruments. Really preposterous stuff. 

 

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On 2/22/2018 at 7:49 AM, Requiem said:

One of the great emperor's new clothes bands when it comes to their live shows if you ask me.

I've seen them many times in Australia and the sound is literally a wall of noise with no discernible riffs or even notes. Just some guy with a clock around his neck gurning at the audience for 40 minutes while randoms create fuzz on their instruments. Really preposterous stuff. 

 

 

What were you doing at Portal shows? They seem about as far as one could get from the kind of music you enjoy.

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On 10/03/2018 at 8:24 AM, FatherAlabaster said:

 

What were you doing at Portal shows? They seem about as far as one could get from the kind of music you enjoy.

Multi-band bills. I’ve seen most Australian bands several times, especially connected to doom shows which is entirely my bag.

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