Portraits Of Past
Discography

LA RECENSIONE

A Californian band from San Francisco, active between 1994-95, associated with the screamo genre. There isn't much more information about Portraits of Past, at least on Wikipedia and similar sources. However, it should be noted that it was quite an active period musically, and Californian Hardcore-Punk evolved into new forms enough to coin the term Hardcore-Emo starting from 1991 with Heroin, a band from San Diego as pioneers of the genre.

From the catalog of Ebullition, a well-known and historical label within screamo, the "Discography" of Portraits Of Past gathers the entire biannual production of the band. Initially, it only included eight studio-produced tracks, but in later reissues, live tracks or those selected from splits with other bands were added. And then, as often happens, having been left in the dark by popular music circuits, the "portraits of the past" decided to leave everything behind and venture into new paths still within the screamo genre, taking part in bands like Nexus Six and Funeral Diner, or, as in the case of the guitarist Rex Shelverton, creating more typically rock projects like Bellavista, formerly Vue.

"KQED Equals Volvo", the opening track of the "Discography," just 1.40 minutes, introduces the band's production without notice and not without eliciting emotions, mostly driven by the angry screams of singer Robert Allan. The syncopated scream, a cry of despair/liberation of the verse "Momentary This Bliss," reveals some traits of Portraits Of Past: rough structures and rusty guitars, muddled sounds, compression, repression. But it is far too reductive. The album continues with the second track ("Bang Yer Head") in all its explosive charge, but one starts to hear "deviations" of exquisitely crafted melodies. And the whole album conceptually folds, through continuous haunting and hypnotic arpeggios, sudden stops, onto a nihilistic and dark orbit. The arpeggio of "Something Less Than Intended" reiterates from the intro the same version of events, and the harmonic elaboration of the two guitars serves as a prelude to chaos.

After numerous reunions destined to be such only for concerts and a couple of evenings, Portraits Of Past returned to work and released "Cypress Dust Witch," a four-track EP published in November 2009 with the label Excursions To The Abyss. They exist, therefore they are.