Texas blackened-hardcore collective Portrayal Of Guilt leave scorched earth in their wake on terrifying third album, Christfucker.
For those who hadn’t guessed from its ultra-provocative title, the third full-length from Portrayal Of Guilt will not be for everyone. Driving on from where they left off with January’s soul-shuddering second album We Are Always Alone, its 10 tracks are built from hardcore’s most serrated edges and nihilistic offcuts, with elements of scourging black metal and haunting dark ambient, industrial dissonance and cacophonous noise-rock piled into a hellish mix. Rather than an exercise in outrageous maximalism, however, Christfucker feels like one of the most perfectly measured extreme releases of the year.
It’s all about different shades of evil. Named after the level of hell reserved for heretics, first track proper The Sixth Circle manages to err on the side of menace for the most part before it explodes in a skin-flaying hail of blastbeats. Dirge refuses to live down to its name, striking a miserabilist foundation before layering the of jittery mania on top. The Crucifixion is an exercise in low-key avant garde intensity that concludes with the sound of nails being hammered into wood. Master_Slave manages to load its 155-second, three-act structure almost with undertones of corrupt sensuality.
A couple of inspired guest spots expand the spectrum of suffering further still. Sadist begins with a combination of swagger and severity normally reserved for the most infernal end of black metal, but the arrival of Jenna Rose of New York darkwave project Anatomy sees it spiral into gloriously unhinged histrionics. Touché Amoré frontman Jeremy Bolm, meanwhile, crops up on Fall From Grace, lending his pitchy gravitas to a chronicle of pain that lurches from its severe opening into a stark portrait of resignation and defeat.
Listeners who’ve stuck around long enough to get to the closing salvo are rewarded by the punishing power of …where the suffering never ends before Possession leaves off with a head-spinning assault that feels both viscerally unsettling and eerily evocative of what it would really be like to lose your soul to Satan. Like we said, this won’t be an album for everyone. But for those with an appreciation for the cold, dark and depraved, it’s a hellscape worth falling into.
Verdict: 4/5
For fans of: Wristmeetrazor, Trap Them, Code Orange
Christfucker is out now via Run For Cover
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