PORTAL - Outre (12" LP)

With Outré, Portal did not just follow up Seepia—they unraveled it further, splitting the seams and twisting the foundation into something even more grotesque and unknowable. What began as warped and unsettling death metal in their earlier work has here become a fully mutated entity. Outré doesn’t seek to refine the ideas of its predecessor—it sinks them deeper into the mire and invites the listener to follow.

This record does not conform to any current of contemporary death metal. While most of the genre in the mid-2000s was moving toward polish, precision, and performative brutality, Portal chose obscurity, suffocation, and abstraction. The production alone makes this clear. Guitars do not riff in any recognizable form. They swarm and collapse like decaying architecture, producing a wall of diseased texture rather than melody. The Curator’s vocals are buried beneath this mass, delivering arcane proclamations from a place that feels far removed from the present—neither human nor theatrical, just pure dread given voice.

The drums, handled by Monocular, play a key role in the record’s unstable momentum. They lurch and stagger, often deliberately at odds with what little structure exists in the songs. Instead of propelling the music forward, they contribute to its sense of inertia—as if the whole record is sinking, not moving. On tracks like “Abysmill” and “13 Globes,” this rhythmic sabotage only makes the experience more oppressive.

Rather than present distinct songs, Outré offers a single contiguous descent. There are passages that briefly feel graspable—like the start of “Black Houses” or the sudden eruption in “Omnipotent Crawling Chaos”—but they are fleeting. Every moment threatens to dissolve into feedback or collapse under its own weight. And yet, through this chaos, there is control. Horror Illogium’s guitar work may sound improvised to the untrained ear, but there is method to his madness. Beneath the swirling dissonance lies a carefully measured approach to tonality and pacing.

One of Outré’s most fascinating qualities is how it refuses to reveal itself all at once. Each listen peels away a layer, offering glimpses into the buried mechanics of its soundworld. The discomfort this record produces is not born of aggression, but of disorientation. It is like wandering an abandoned asylum where nothing chases you—but the silence is constantly closing in.

Portal’s aesthetic here is not death metal with horror themes. It is horror itself rendered through sound. The atmosphere is so thick and unwavering that by the time closer “Sourlows” ends, the silence feels almost shocking. The band’s visual and lyrical themes—antique madness, decayed elegance, Lovecraftian entropy—are perfectly reflected in the music. Even the runtime feels intentional. At just over half an hour, Outré never overstays its welcome, but it lingers long after it's over.

While Seepia offered glimpses of the abyss, Outré pulls you into it entirely. It is one of the rare death metal records that achieves a genuine sense of unease—not through gore or shock tactics, but through total collapse of structure and sound. It demands effort, patience, and an openness to death metal stripped of all its familiar comforts.

This is not an album for casual listening. It is not for those seeking riffs, hooks, or clarity. Outré exists as a monument to death metal’s outermost fringe—a masterwork of alienation, decay, and deliberate confusion. For the brave, it is essential.