Portal, since day one, have always been pretty theatrical, even for a death metal band. I mean, any band with a member called "Horror Illogium" is probably deeply concerned with providing drama in addition to the more traditional musical offerings. Portal's particular methodology for generating theatrics usually revolves around insisting that they're more death metal than other death metal bands, conducting all of their communication with the media in character, and emphasising the "evil" qualities of their music.

And, to be fair, they are pretty good at making their music sound evil. Vocalist "The Curator" has a subterranean, dæmonic-sounding voice that never once jumps into the higher registers on the whole album, and the guitars deal in swirling vortexes of noise rather than in identifiable riffs most of the time. For instance, that rush of noise that opens up Abysmill, the second track on the album, is in fact just a washed out, churning guitar. The noise that is produced by this is harsh, heavy, and almost completely atonal, rather than a melodic instrument becoming an ever-present, oppressive roar.

This leaves, for the most part, the bass to provide the melodic direction on "Outre, and this is achieved with surprising subtlety. For instance, the gently ascending harmony towards the end of Heirships (if a band like this could be accused of doing anything "gently", that is) provides an excellent counterpoint to the dull growl of the ever-present guitar noise, and helps cut through the rather generic drum work.

Towards the end of "Portal", the band do revert to slightly more conventional song structures, such as on 13 Globes, which features actual discernable guitar notes and a rather conventional stop/start death metal song structure. It's not that it's a particularly bad example of the genre, but given the brutal excess of the first half of the album and the band's pretensions of being a much more 'pure' death metal band, it's a bit of a letdown.

A note should be made about the packaging of this album, which is some of the best that I've seen with a new release in some time. On the disc itself, Portal show that they're not a band that cares particularly for metal convention. If you ignore the drama and posturing that the band seems to indulge themselves in, and concentrate on the music instead, then this is a pretty good album with a focus on sheer brutality over technical excellence or lyrical merit.