Portals of Past and Present

When you are not familiar with the music that an album contains, you have to listen more carefully to every part, to every second of the album in order to understand it and to write a review without being unfair to it. “Portals of Past and Present” was released in January of 2012 and it is the first demo release of Diseased Oblivion from the U.S.A. and it follows four split albums and one compilation. The introduction above was written because Diseased Oblivion play a very weird mixture of dark ambient and slow Doom or even Funeral Doom Metal, genres that I’m not too familiar with. The Black Metal element does not exist as we know it and the listen of the album is quite difficult for someone who doesn’t listen to this genre.

The demo, which lasts for almost half an hour, contains four compositions which balance between ambient and Funeral Doom while there are also some noise parts. The riffs are heavy and atmospheric which are combined with the ambient elements and bring to the listener’s mind images of abandoned cities, ruins and generally the images that a war leaves behind. The tracks are quite long in duration and the ambient elements make them somehow tedious. Also the riffs that will catch the listener’s attention are very few, as the majority of the riffs sound almost similar to each other. The guitars are heavy, their sound is quite bassy and quite distorted. The bass can’t be heard clearly while the drums with their minimalistic lines, they follow the slow rhythms of the guitar. Vocals don’t exist in the tracks. The production is bassy and it puts out a powerful sound that gives depth and it fits to the compositions. The mix is quite good as it produces an eerie noise which plays a very important role to the created atmosphere.

Generally this album created in my mind some images and in some parts it put me into its atmosphere but for the most part of it, it was tedious and repetitive. Surely it is not an album that will interest the Black Metal audience so from the beginning I wouldn’t suggest you to listen to it. Though I doubt if it will be appreciated even by you that you are familiar and you deal with that sound. Avoid.