Entry 339 - Portal - Outre

 

I remember my first time listening to Outre. I had heard the name Portal show up a few times in my online adventures, but never heard the band. I finally got around to checking them out. I don't think anything could have prepared me for what Outre was about to unleash upon me.

The album starts off rather tame during the two minute introduction... but when Abysmill starts... I can't even describe what this sounds like. Are these riffs? Is this noise? Is that a guitar? Is that... what is that? What. The. Fuck. Is. That?

Years later I know that the sounds on this album are all created by guitars. What they are playing though I could not begin to tell you. You see these guys live and their hands are all over the fretboards, their fingers contorted to unnatural shapes. It looks as twisted as the music sounds.

Even now 15 years later, I don't think I've ever heard this style successfully repeated by anyone. I've heard a ton of albums that have been influenced by this but nothing that has matched it. The slow, incoherent droning of the guitars and the lazy march of the drums intertwining back and fourth is nearly hypnotic.

In an attempt to answer my original questions... no these are not really riffs. This is more of a collection of notes that do not belong together that form a noise that is inhuman, Lovecraftian, not of this world. It's a glimpse into the mind of those who have forsaken their sanity.