To say that Portal’s second album Outr is one of my most anticipated releases of 2007 would be an understatement. After being exposed to their obscure and baffling breed of death metal on Seepia and their split with Rites of Thy Degringolade, then hearing the promising new material on the Lurker at the Threshold demo tape, Portal quickly rode its way to the top of the of my "bands to look out for" list.

And Outré is everything I could want from a Portal album. The riffs are bizarre, complex, and darkly organic; they’re up there with Gorguts‘ more experimental moments as they are intricate but neither overly sterile nor eternally clinical like many technical death metal bands. Hell, the closer "Sourlows" at times sounds like a blackened Negativa, with riff work that unfolds in the most obfuscating manner. The ambient parts that reminded me so much of Rune have been minimized for sections in which the obtuse riffing creates a doom-like atmosphere, but strangely is neither slow like doom nor as obviously present as typical death metal riffing. When the more cacophonous riffing is mixed with these doom-like moments, it creates a soundscape that resembles only the bleakest dirge available in metal today. And then there is the drumming, which is neither overly triggered nor insanely technical. It gets complex when it needs to but smartly keeps to a very somber atmosphere, given much needed foundation to the cacophony of the guitars.

This of course says nothing of the vocal performance brought forth by the Curator. The Curator’s vocal performance has only solidified him as one of my favorite death metal vocalists. His growls are immediately recognizable from the rest of the death metal pack and are delivered with such vigor that it creates the most authentic sounding presence in the record. He actually sounds like some eldritch being called up from the abyss to haunt the nightmares of human kind.

Outré is a fine successor to the insane death metal that Portal introduced to the world on Seepia. It’s otherworldly, strange, esoteric, but most importantly it is fucking harsh. Portal has established themselves as one of Australia’s better death metal acts and a fine export for the genre connoisseur.

Written By: Necro-tron