Portal – Vexovoid
If you strip the imagery from Portal’s bones, what would be left is still a twisted and ugly musical mess from the minds of already unstable people who were rejected by their parents. The darkness nurtures the child, and teaches them to embrace the loneliness and hatred within, which in turn perverts creativity and becomes just as broken sonically as it is emotionally. Vexovoid, the bands 4th full-length plague upon your psyche, is yet again a disjointed, hulking mass of destruction and unending suffering. Detuned to the point of strings sagging off the fretboard, Portal coax demented riffstorms out of their instruments to confuse and bruise the listener with chopping fills, fluent tremolo speed bursts, and nauseating moments of backwards melody. In fact, if you told me the material on this album was created spontaneously, I would believe you if it wasn’t for how the lyrics and demonically deep vocals seem to fall into the all the “right” places. Imagine a faster, more demented, strange, and musically complex entity, like an oozing tumor carved out of Immolation’s figurative “body” of work, and you can begin to consider the shadows this enigma of a band dwells in. Vexovoid is a short, though completely punishing assault on the senses that offers more of an experience than it does something concrete to hold onto. This to me is the uniqueness and ultimate appeal of this band… the sickened lump feeling in your guts as you withstand the moaning/nightmarish guitar riffs and infrequent vocal gutturalizations. Portal’s chasm is a deep and sickening place and you really got to want to be a part of it, for the music does everything it can to devour and torment your every second spent being a part of it. -Marty
Profound Lore Records
Worm Gear 
Well said about Portal. Not my cup of tea. But its kinda of fun listening to for 2 minutes then it gets really boring. Let my broken record shine: ABYSSAL is better at this! haha !
I like this band, but the style isn’t something that reach for often. It’s really a rather alienating sound.
Mindblowing! And Abyssal is not better at this because they don’t sound like this IMO. Abyssal is really really fucking great, but Portal is just something else altogether. When it comes to this type of madness, only Antediluvian comes close…
disagree. the only difference is one doesn’t make riffs buddy
wait, you really think there is no similarities at all? you have corncobs stuck in your ears Freek? I am starting to think you do
There are some riffs on the new Portal, but they are few and fleeting. It’s like they are tuned too low to keep them together. But the mood and intent of the music is where it’s at with this band.
I think it’s still riffs we’re talking about, just really abstract ones. Call ‘m guitar patterns or something. But indeed, it’s about mood (insane, oppressive, twisted, nightmarish etc) and intent with Portal, well said Marty.
Patrick, of course there are similarities, I just think saying Abyssal is better at this doesn’t hit the spot. IMO Portal’s “this” is too different from Abyssal’s “this” to make an analogy. Of course you could say Abyssal sounds better to you.
No, not corncobs, bananas. Which reminds me of this timeless piece of silliness:
I certainly think you can compare them. This isn’t like comparing Mayhem to Kreator here. If you listen to the newest Abyssal there most certainly are clear similarities. In fact, the guys in Abyssal do the whole dress up thing too. There is a ‘tangible goo’ to Abyssal. Abyssal takes the Portal concept and gives the listener something more firm to harness their ears too. Anyways, that is where I stand on it. I am right! haha….
No you’re not. 😉
‘Tangible Goo’, sounds great! Let’s start a band, dress up like 15th century undertakers except for our singer who dresses like an undead pope and call ourselves Tangible Goo. I’ll start desiging our bandlogo. Unreadable, of course.
Yes I am……hahahah
I kinda of like the ring of Tangible Poo. Then we can get really creative with the crowd
Yes you are… NOT! ;-P
Tangible Poo, yes. But then we’ll play goregrind and ask Zahler in the band as well. We’ll spray our crowd with pigshit and decaying pig entrails and we’ll have an even more unreadable bandlogo! \m/