专辑简介

The first demo from 2009, also includes a 'hidden' previously unreleased track. Portent - Everything Portent – Portent A good attempt … but not entirely convincing. 69 This is one of the demos that do not give the listener any time to prepare for the things to come. From second one the band wants to make clear where the trip (might) go to and no introduction builds up the tension here. Somehow the music pounces at the listener and want to drag this person right into the atmosphere, dynamics and what else someone might expect to find there. Yet, unlike bands like Gräfenstein, who chose to use a similar first-second-approach on Silence Endless, the performance of Portent is much calmer and has a good touch of (laid back) doom atmosphere. The British band did not venture towards too the slow end of the scale, but stayed rather around midtempo with some short eruptions in either direction. For a first demo a lot of pieces work together here neatly and the listener will appreciate the progression in the motives as well as the creation of certain tensions. The atmosphere is maybe the outstanding characteristic element for Portent on this demo and the balancing between catchy as well as rhythmic- or lead-guitar facets help to increase fascination of the music. Especially the latter point needs to be emphasized. Cavern Shadows for instance, comes with some ideas that might be a surprise as a lot of black metal bands show some reluctance towards lead-guitar and even solo parts; they are like will-o'-wisps that rise out of the mist above the moor. A dense fog is created by the guitars and on some rare occasions eruptions out of this thick and impenetrable wall can be found. These would be an element to make it 'outstanding' -- do not stretch this term too much -- amongst other demos. The solo-like play creates some dream-like atmosphere and works as a nice counter-point to the slightly dark impression which surrounds this release. Some words on the instrumentation and line-up. The vocals consist of a mixture of black metal screams and growls, but these would not always follow the melody line or rhythms respectively. Rather, these attempt to create some form of tension and work fine with the concept… in some respect. Samples of spoken passages can also be found. In terms of the riffs, two guitars take part in the circus and even though each of them play a somehow minimalist melody line, together a consistent unity is reached. It works and the mixture of dark atmospheric as well as slightly progressive riff structures makes the music memorable and might be an incentive to the listener to return to this release in order to give it an additional spin. Actually, the band did a good job on their first demo and the music is quite listenable, yet it never reached beyond this vague impression. A lot of repetition of the motives and too few variation of the ideas make it hard to keep the fascination up the more this release progresses. Some neat glimpses can be found now and then, but they are stretched too much (even over excess?) and the whole concept of the band becomes predictable the longer the demo takes; as, like the Cypriotic band Dictator the British one returns again and again to a quite peculiar kind of art, but without offering a convincing case. Would the music be good and create a dense and well crafted atmosphere, then complains might be misplaced but rather the contrary is the case here. Plainness reigns a good deal of the releases and overshadows the good attempts. Final bits and bytes Portent are by no means bad; their self-titled debut demo is quite listenable. Moreover, some neat arrangements and motives can be found there; the tunes are catchy and some tracks are really atmospheric. Nevertheless, by looking at it from a broader perspective, then the curiosity of the listener is only raised for a short period of time; there are some moments that are going to last, but these are mere glimpses and nothing more. More variation in the concept/song-writing and a clear(er) approach in the music would make the music more interesting and help overcome the current short-comings. This piece of art is not overtly bad, just unconvincing in its execution. More compositions similar to Cavern Shadows, but with less repetition, would be a step in the right direction.