Swarth

Phil Anselmo LOVES these guys and I wonder what Corey Taylor has to say about them.

This is terrible. if you want real music, do NOT get any by portal.

Portal sound like the end of time itself. True horror..

Pretty much musical genius. The only truly original music I've heard in years. I can't think of anyone to compare them too. They make Anaal Nathrakh and Hate Eternal sound like sing-a-long stadium rock bands. If you don't like music like this, just move along. For the more adventurous, here's something to sink your teeth into.

I had to edit my post because i couldn't stand to leave a review without hearing the album. I found out that the lyrics are largely inconsequential in the grand scheme of the album. It is very murky as the rest of the reviewers have said, but i don't really see the difficulty in deciphering it all, the guitars are clear and the drums just aren't as in front of the mix as normal death metal releases. I actually quite like the drum production, as a lot of death metal releases make it hard to hear the guitars. Overall a solid outing and sorry about ripping on the lyrics in my earlier post(though i still don't get them).

I had never heard of Portal before I got this CD at the library. I had no idea what it might be, so i looked it up on the catalog. Discovering that it was death metal, I decided to borrow it. (What did i have to lose?) Apparently, quite a bit. I was disappointed in myself for getting something so bad. The guitar work is little more than ultra-distorted minor-scale tremolo picking, and offers very little variation between each song in the short setlist, which brings us to our next problem, the length. With only 8 songs, I was hoping for some long, ambitious, epic-sounding "movements." (Opeth, anyone?) Unfortunately, most of the songs (excluding "Werships") are standard length, making me begin to question the band's dedication to this record. The drums are buried far to deep in the distortion of the guitars, to the extent that really only the cymbals are audible. The vocals were perhaps the most disappointing part, and are really better described as "breaths" than growls. Though some black metal fans may enjoy it, I believe that I can safely say that Swarth is simply too strange for most DM listeners to find interest in. I'm just happy that i got the CD for free and didn't pay money to download it.

Yes, all of this describes the band, it's a very unusual genre, with creepy lyrics, similar to velvet cacoon. Check it out

Portal is a recent discovery and Swarth was the first album I purchased. I enjoy a lot of Death Metal, but as of late a lot of it sounds the same. It has become more and more difficult to discern between the different bands, and I haven't been buying a lot of DM because of this reason. Portal is very challenging music, and I think the people that have left negative reviews on their other albums lack the intelligence necessary to understand Portal's music. The production is very different from what most metal fans are accustomed to. The drums are buried in the mix, the guitars are very prominent but are so distorted it becomes very challenging to make out the virtuoso, hyper-technical instrumentation. Portal has pioneered a truly original sound. Now, I can only speak for myself, but this album invokes a visceral sense of horror and doom, and is one of the more evil, tormented-sounding recordings I've heard. Portal grind out a hypnotic, grandiose din that is truly original, and the breathy, growling vocals only add to the overwhelming sense of terror and foreboding. This is a truly original act. I think this album should appeal to Black Metal fans as well as fans of Grindcore (the former is used to poor production and typically prefers it - not to say that this is poor production, but BM fans will appreciate having to dig around in the muck for all of the sonic tidbits hiding within; the latter because this is a churning, grinding cyclone of molten hell).

These guys are terrifying!