Seepia by PORTAL

Portal’s debut full-length Seepia remains one of the most bizarre and arresting statements in death metal history. Released in 2003, it captures the band at their most primal yet conceptually rich stage. What unfolds across these tracks is not a conventional extreme metal album, but a corrosive spiral into surreal horror, channeled through broken riffs, unsettling production, and a disfigured sense of structure that pushes music into something closer to abstract performance art.

From the opening moments of “Glumurphonel,” Portal makes it clear that Seepia is designed to disorient. Guitars scrape and twist with mechanical precision, constantly moving but never landing on a groove. Horror Illogium’s playing is as alien as it is intricate, evoking the sound of collapsing architecture rather than riffs in any traditional sense. The drumming veers between restraint and convulsive outbursts, never falling into familiar patterns, while the bass coils beneath it all like a lurking presence, barely distinguishable from the overall decay.

At the heart of this sonic chaos is The Curator. His vocal delivery on Seepia is more incantation than roar. Instead of overpowering the listener, his voice creeps in, muttering beneath the surface, adding a sense of dread that’s far more unsettling than sheer volume could ever be. It suits the album’s atmosphere of rotting elegance, where every piece feels carefully unhinged.

While Seepia has been compared to the likes of Beherit and Immolation, Portal twists those influences into a form entirely their own. The production is abrasive and lo-fi, but in a calculated way. It sounds antique, as if recovered from a haunted reel of tape, eroded by time and suffering. The result is music that feels not just written, but summoned—an aural curse steeped in antique horror, occult obsession, and avant-garde disdain for tradition.

What makes Seepia so striking is its dual nature. On one hand, it is grotesque and impenetrable, difficult to understand by design. On the other, there is a theatrical intelligence guiding every moment. The band’s sense of timing, texture, and mood betrays a deliberate artistic vision. This is not chaos for chaos’s sake. Portal controls their madness with the poise of master performers, pulling from the language of classic horror cinema and twisted experimentalism to craft something uniquely menacing.

For those unprepared, Seepia may sound like death metal collapsing under its own weight. But with patience, the patterns begin to emerge, and the band’s brilliance becomes undeniable. It is a rare kind of record—intimidating, repulsive, yet strangely beautiful. Few albums in the genre feel so deliberate in their descent into dementia.

Two decades on, Seepia still holds power as a disturbing artifact. It offers no comfort, no catharsis, only an invitation to witness music unravel and reform in the hands of madmen. Whether viewed as a warped tribute to the legacy of underground death metal or a declaration of artistic war against it, Seepia remains unmatched in its vision.