Portal - Seepia

Jesus, what a glorious fucking mess. I am instantly reminded of the Pissgrave review I did recently; these guys are really, really similar, only Portal has a more dark and eery vibe, rather than the terrifyingly vivid, gory splurge of Pissgrave. It would not surprise me if the bands shared members or something (edit: I just found out how old this album is, guess that Pissgrave relation was wishful thinking).

Anyway, this is some spooky shit. It can be difficult to successfully blend a theatrical element into death metal, especially without it seeming hammy or corny as fuck, but Portal's racket (and image) is genuinely sinister and terrifying. It is almost as if the essence of death metal itself is being sucked through some other-worldly tear in the fabric of time and space; siphoned off to some unknown existence beyond the material plane, where it is subjected to inhuman and incomprehensible levels of horror, before being spewed back to us for our listening pleasure. Yeah.

Pissgrave - Suicide Euphoria

Pissgrave are one of the few bands out there these days that actually fucking scare me; what a crazy explosion of disgusting sound! And I mean, what in the holy hell is going on with the sleeve art? Granted, I've seen the world's innards on many a goregrind sleeve but there's something entirely menacing about the unknown fate of whoever's bones are on the cover. Is that weird? Fuck it. The murky mystery of the cover art compliments the muddy clusterfuck that is Suicide Euphoria absolutely perfectly. It almost sounds like the music itself is spluttering out of that horrible brown liquid.

The vocals are something else. Definitely some of the sickest lows I've heard in a while; borrowing heavily from the nauseating spit and gurgle heard more in goregrind than in any type of death metal. Stand out tracks for me are "Impaled Vibration" and "Blood Fog".