Portal
Outre

Portal, "Outre." Or "of horror crystallized in music."

Why in this vale of tears can danger never be separated from beauty? Why are the most attractive girls the ones that hit you so hard that when you look in the mirror, you say, "Good evening, can I help you?"? These are questions that man has always asked himself, in the presence of a truth almost undeniable like the one just mentioned; a truth whose validity also applies to the genre known as Avantgarde metal, whose extreme variety is a splendor but also (indeed) a risk that should not be underestimated. And indeed this time I've become infatuated with a band that doesn't make you feel like you're sitting on dynamite, worse: as if you had a lit stick of dynamite up your backside. This is the brilliant and ineffable Portal, who with their second album "Outre" (2007) - alas - reach their full maturity, after a still rather unripe work like "Seepia."

Describing this album effectively with human words is a daunting if not impossible task, given that the object in question is anything but human. These Australian madmen of exacerbated madness immediately express their homicidal intentions with the intro "Moil": in practice, it will be like riding a spirit in a whirling vortex of souls; a shrill and chilling sound that heralds catastrophes of biblical proportions. If something in your gut has moved, from the subsequent "Abysmill" you won't be able to do without a diaper: a dark and relentless wave assails you, the pitch-black growl of the enigmatic "The Curator" spreads like blackish bile, and the wall of guitars (Horror Illogium and Aphotic Mote) towers over the drums of the cyclopean Monocular and, aided by the absence of any structure in the tracks, will disorient you, stun you, and buffet you, rendering you human wrecks incapable of understanding or acting.

And don't think it ends here: it continues on this path for the entire album, except for two gems: the title track and the last track, "Sourlows." In "Outre" the torment of Black ambient is joined by a fierce noise, in a parasitic crescendo: a bit like being tortured with a blowtorch before being raped with a chainsaw! As for the other track... amazing. It's the most absurd and convoluted piece of the entire show, and that says a lot; two minutes and some spare change before the sound that dominates the entire album begins, a sort of shapeless and tentacular blot that blindly grabs at every vital organ.

In conclusion, you know what I say? If you're one of those who go to see horror movies as kiddie stuff with your girl, to counter the screen's abominations with a french kiss, sweating from terror and delight while others vomit... then maybe it's better you let it go. But if you're one of the other category, one of those who feel horror projections on their skin, and enjoy watching the poor teenager of the moment being eaten alive by the great-grandmother buried in the garden, do yourself a favor, buy this work and let yourself be delighted. Because this might be music, but it's still one of the many declensions of pure horror.