Not even live? What about headphones?

sup bros there's a new Portal song.
http://pitchfork.com/reviews/tracks/14675-curtain/
Sounds more like "normal" death metal than their other stuff, but its still really strange and Portalish. Highly anticipating the album.

I already posted my thoughts on Facebook, but I'll copy-paste them here since I don't feel like rewording myself.

Interesting. It's in some sort of middle ground between the usual Portal and Impetuous Ritual.

That went by pretty fast for a six minute song.

It's certainly a lot more straightforward than what they usually do -- but still Portal, through and through. You'd never mistaken this for another band.

New track released through Pitchfork.
http://pitchfork.com/reviews/tracks/14675-curtain/

This art is pretty cool but quite different from the others. The name also sounds pretty cool. I noticed Portal's music tends to match their albums' art pretty decently, so I'm guessing this one will sound a little more trippy and/or atmospheric.

Someone already linked it, silly.

i hope Marduk bring those cunts [plural!] over here too

edit: nope, no portal fun times in nz, for now...
http://www.chaosnz.com/viewEvent.php?id=18

i forgot i took this photo yesterday

I found the song pretty damned tedious. Kinda like the first couple of songs on Outre which just kinda churn without being interesting. And as other's have said it's pretty normal dark and cavernous DM except for a couple of little parts. So far I'm feeling a resounding eh towards this.

Oh...that was good.

Digging the hell out of the new song. Liking the clarity of the guttural guitars and the overall bass is the heaviest it's ever been. As I had hoped they are continuing in the direction of the more experimental songs on Swarth, such as Larvae. I'm finding the overall sound less messy and more decipherable than ever before.

this is pretty wicked, it's unmistakably portal [someone up there said that]
http://pitchfork.com/reviews/tracks/14675-curtain/

Just got done listening to the new track for the fourth time today and its so goddamn good. I wouldn't expect anything less, but damn, now I'm practically savoring to hear the album in its entirety. I agree with some of the comments so far...it definitely sounds more blackened during the middle section and the style seems reminiscent of Larvae from the previous effort. Oh, and the Curator does, indeed, sound fucking vicious. All of these things are awesome. Larvae, along with Writhin, is my favorite track from Swarth and I really embrace these sort of "spurts" - when the riffing really just takes you for a crazy, mind boggling ride. I find the structure of the song to be really interesting too...its as if the opening drum hits break the seal and something fucked up oozes out, before finally gushing forth in a spurt (the middle section), before finally slowing and running out of steam, leaving us with an echo of whats just happened that fades to black rather ominously.

This track is sounding great. It certainly sounds a lot like Outre', which is a little disappointing after the more experimental approach of Swarth but what makes up for it are the vocals and the bass. Oh my god, the bass is more audible and gives it a whole other menacing feeling. Like subterranean Lovecraftian creature lurking the ground beneath.

Let's hope the rest of the album makes up for the very un-Portal album art.

holy fuck new song sounds amazing, weird name for a song though

I'm not a big Portal fan, but that song really did it for me. Looking forward to more.

just out of curiosity what did you like about that song compared about other portal songs?

Listening AGAIN before bed and the vocals actually seem to have a whispering, scathing like quality about them at times if you listen closely. Wow. Fucking eerie. As is usually the case with this band, I'm getting more and more out of every listen. Gonna be so burned out on this track by the time the full length is out.

as usual with portal the more i listen to it the better it gets really looking forward to this album i didnt have a clue where they could go from Swarth since that is pretty much the pinnacle of music to me

I'd have to go back and re-visit the other Portal stuff. I can't really answer that definitively right now. It's kind of I tested them out awhile back (months or a couple years), and simply found it wasn't my thing. I'm glad to re-visit bands and see if a) their music has changed or b) my tastes have changed.

The music HAS changed. It's still Portal but this song was much slower, more menacing, the vocals were better, and it was more intelligible.

It's just one song, guyth.

This just sounds merely okay to me, though as a user above has stated, Portal takes a little while to digest. Still looking forward to this.

+1.



But... I'm starting to listen to this band.

Oh no, the song is good enough, but I can't help but think I've heard a similar sounding song elsewhere. Though for me, it's Portal's backwards, sideways, inverted Immolation riffs that keep me thirsty for more, which this song has. Also, taken from the NWN board:


Australian surrealist death metal terror unit PORTAL have completed work on their anticipated fourth full-length album entitled “Vexovoid”, the four year follow-up to their “Swarth” predecessor.

Taking their sound of singular death metal psychosis by creating their darkest and most-dense sounding album to date, “Vexovoid” carries the tradition PORTAL have laid upon since their inception 18 years ago. Through the band’s strange, unsettling, avant-garde, and polarizing take on death metal (on a musical, lyrical, visual, and aesthetical level), throughout the years PORTAL have shape-shifted and inverted the genre into multiple realms of dementia. “Vexovoid”, as expected, is another dreadful and frightening observation of unorthodox death metal terror unparalleled.

To be officially released on Feb 19th (LP version to be released not too long after the CD version) and featuring artwork by Reverend Kriss Hades, tracklisting for “Vexovoid” goes as follows:

1. Kilter
2. The Back Wards
3. Curtain
4. Plasm
5. Awryeon
6. Orbmorphia
7. Oblotten

i.e. more like this.

I must say, I'm very pleased with how the song sounds. This may be very well be their best release yet.

The more and more I listen to "Curtains", the more I fall in love with that riff that is repeated until the song fades out.

I like it.. at first I thought it sounded just like some long intro but it evolved to my favor.

all good you dont have to do that i was just curious

the vocals have received a change since Swarth i think i like it better but they sound more fierce

The production is great and the vocals are simply killer, but it sounds a bit too clean for Portal, maybe more streamlined than what I'm used for them.

I'll get it, hopefully the vinyl version will come out in the same month or the next one.

Liking the drum sound on Curtain!

You know something is awry when a band can have an every day word as a song title and it can be considered weird. Anyways, this is killer. Always been a big Portal fan. Can't wait until February.

lol so true its funny that all the other song titles did not stand out for me because they are usual weird portal but curtain was really weird because its a normal word cant wait to hear the entire album portal albums tend to be the best when you listen to the entire thing instead of just a song or two

Behold "The Back Wards".

http://www.npr.org/blogs/allsongs/2013/ ... back-wards

Ambrosia.

what is the new song like? i cant listen to it appears on youtube

A bag full of hammers in a washing machine - lol. It's pretty good. Has that sort of churning feeling that Swarth had.

Dude, that was pretty rad. Again, this song points to more focused songwriting from the band, making it more memorable. Also, that part at about 1:54 where the instruments drop out and The Curator growls is just crushing. Looking forward to this album more and more as the days roll by.

This is shaping up to be the best Portal album yet. I really like how they made the guitars actually decipherable. MalignantThrone will disagree more than any human has disagreed before.

I've stayed clear of Portal for no apparent reason but I just heard something very evil in that track. Great stuff (so far). I'm not the biggest Portal fan but I'll attempt to give this a listen when it's out.

That song was even more accessible than the first one, it was also way better. Definitely lacking in the ritualistic evil department but makes up for it just being a good song. Its also really cool to see the curator pushing himself at the end there, great song.