Chords for Xasthur- Portal of Sorrow ALBUM REVIEW

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It's getting hot out boy!
_ Zastr, Portal of Sorrow.
My needle drops, Anthony Fantano here, internet's busiest music nerd.
Haven't done a metal review in a while.
Gotta do a metal review guys.
Zastr's Portal of Sorrow.
Zastr is a one man Californian black metal project,
who's eight albums tall,
but his releases go into the dozens when you count demos,
and splits, and EPs, and all that other jazz.
And Portal of Sorrow is alleged to be the last album from the Zastr project
because Malefic, or Scott Connor rather, is closing the doors on it for good.
But there are rumors around the internet and on Zastr's website of other projects coming down the pipe.
Now Zastr over the course of his career has proven to be just as harsh as any other black metal artist out there.
The LP Subliminal Genocide comes to mind.
But there's always been a very prevalent atmospheric, some would say ambient, style to his music.
Stuff that is really looking to kind of alter your mood as opposed to rock your face off.
Stuff that's a lot like Burzum, or Wolves in the Throne Room, Leviathan.
Not these more straightforward black metal sounds that we're hearing from new records by bands like Gorgoroth or Arcanum.
And the ambient feels really out in full force on Portal of Sorrow.
I can really see why the guys and son have given this project so much kudos,
and have collaborated with Scott Connor in the past.
Despite the very lo-fi, very home recorded approach that Zastr takes on this record,
which isn't a surprise in light of his other records,
he comes up with some really interesting sounds.
Like the humming, really distorted guitars on This Abyss Holds the Mirror.
There are also some very beautiful female vocals provided by Marissa Nadler.
And Connor's vocals are just really wretched and harsh,
but they have this really surreal, awkward at times blurriness, haziness to them.
Kind of as if they're buried underground.
My only real complaint on the entire record is the drums and some of the drumming.
The mixing on the drums kind of makes them feel out of place in relation to all the other instruments in a given song,
and plus there are some moments where the drums are just played pretty badly.
I'm surprised Scott Connor didn't do a couple second takes.
One of the worst drum flubs on the entire LP is right where it shouldn't be,
at the very beginning of the album.
It was possibly one of the worst LP starts I've ever heard,
and it really made me question the kind of music, or at least the kind of playing,
that I was going to be in for for the duration of this LP.
And there are a lot of moments like that for me.
Some of the bass is a little clumsy, some of the keyboard playing here and there is behind tempo.
I know black metal isn't about virtuosity.
However, is it about not caring?
Not even a little bit?
Just not even giving a sh-
However, I found the LP actually got better as I trudged through it.
The songs to me were actually getting more entertaining,
and I was feeling a lot of the bleak, desperate emotions that Zaster injects into this music.
I suppose a few gripes about this LP that are not just mine, that I feel like a lot of people are going to have.
The keyboards do sound a little bit cheesy, especially the synthesized horns and the synthesized strings.
They didn't really bother me.
I thought the sounds were okay.
Plus, I'm kind of used to that sound from listening to black metal.
Didn't really disappoint, but I can see the keyboards getting in the way of enjoyment for a lot of people.
I think my major gripe about this album is that a lot of the songs just kind of meander structurally.
They just kind of harp on one idea and just drag it out and drag it out.
Thankfully, Zaster kind of ends each track before a given idea gets so boring that you don't want to hear it anymore.
However, it's kind of hard to take one song out of this entire LP and say,
Ah, this is self-contained.
This is a good track that I can show you.
Here's a great Zaster track.
That's not really how this album and how most of Zaster albums work.
Each track kind of feels like it's part of this bigger picture of this thing that really should be listened through in one sitting.
However, there's not really any kind of rhyme or reason, at least to me anyway,
as to how these songs link together or if they're linked together at all,
because they certainly don't fade into one another.
That's for sure.
Though I enjoy the black metal sound, and this LP certainly has that sound,
and 2009's All Reflections Drained, I feel like this new LP is superior to that one in terms of color,
variation, production, clarity.
This new LP definitely has better sounds than that last one.
However, structurally, melodically, and conceptually, I still found this new album very, very underwhelming.
Very underwhelming.
I know there are some Zaster fans subscribed to me, some people who have heard this album.
What do you think [B] about it?
Love it?
Hate it?
And why?
And also, was this a good end to the project, or was it pretty much, meh?
Let me know.
Anthony Fantano, Zaster, Portal of Sorrow, [C] forever.
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