Year Of Metal #018: Portal - Avow

Unfortunately we’ve hit somewhat of a wall with this one. So far in my Year Of Metal - and more generally my experience listening to metal music - I’ve heard a reasonable amount of stuff that aims to challenge, to attack. The death and black metal I’ve wrapped my ears around can be seriously abrasive and make you search for the song itself behind walls of roaring noise and harsh sounds. I can understand that as an artistic approach and enjoy it so long as the songwriting chops are there, as I can with any genre of music. There’s something to say for shedding melody altogether at times, exploring more closely what one can do with texture and rhythm. 

Portal’s Avow, though - this one I just don’t get. I know it’s a me thing, that there’ll be people who dig it, and as ever that’s great, but this went beyond behind a challenging listen and into something downright unpleasant. Rightly or wrongly, the conclusion I’m drawing is that this is almost an endurance test - you put yourself through 43 minutes of near-white noise and come out the other side because you’re metal enough to take it.

There are moments I can appreciate, if not particularly enjoy. “Eye” has incredible intensity to its desperately scrabbling riffs. It provokes real, desperate terror, which is an emotional response a lot more interesting than “I don’t like this at all”, which is what I get from a lot of this stuff. The back end of “Bode” has an intensity and savagery to the drums at the back end, some of the most base percussion I can recall hearing on a professionally recorded track. 

I have to reserve admiration and even praise for the vocals, performed by an individual who goes by The Curator (they’ve all got names along these lines and I’m there for it in this case). As I’ve said, the guttural vocals of extreme metal aren’t always my bag, but the sheer power The Curator puts into these tracks has to be heard to be believed. It’s inhuman stuff that is suited for the monolithic, overwhelming approach to Portal’s music. 

Avow is a complete onslaught that I can’t imagine listening to again, but you’d be hard pushed to say Portal haven’t succeeded in what they set out to do. This is boundary-pushing music with the intent to disorient and horrify, and as far as I’m concerned, they’ve achieved that goal with gusto.