Portrayal of Guilt are a blackened hardcore band from the US and this is their fourth album.
…Beginning of the End is the sound of Portrayal of Guilt pushing their sound harder and deeper. Across 31 evocative minutes, the band reach across genres and styles to grasp what they want in an unyielding iron grip. …Beginning of the End brings a lot to the table.
This record takes black metal, hardcore, screamo, noise rock, and sludge, combines them into something sleek and lethal, and then injects a harsh experimental edge – elements of industrial, hip hop, trip hop, and nu-metal pepper the release like a virulent infection.
To get a rough idea of the diverse territories that Portrayal of Guilt invade over these 11 tracks, think a stinking mass of melted flesh made from the mangled offcuts of bands like Chat Pile, Converge, Full of Hell, Fange, Godflesh, Korn, Nine Inch Nails, Pitchshifter, and more. The best thing is though, that Portrayal of Guilt are resolutely their own thing, and …Beginning of the End stands on its own merits throughout its running time.
…Beginning of the End is raw and aggressive, harrowing and atmospheric, but also makes you move like a bastard. It’s a hard combination to balance, especially when it’s spliced with atypical genre influences like it is here. It has a dense rhythmic capacity to shake the floor when it’s playing, with frequent eruptions of gigantic bass and drums that hit as hard as falling concrete.
Portrayal of Guilt effectively bring together a range of styles and ideas over the course of this record. You could be listened to vicious blackened heaviness one moment and punishing industrial hip hop the next. Dissonant atmospheric darkness is around the next corner, while harsh noise comes upon you suddenly after that. Then there’s d-beat intensity, monstrous death growls, expressive mood-focused sludge mountains, groovy trip hop breaks, and more. One-dimensional this is not, not even close.
Portrayal of Guilt have thrown a lot into …Beginning of the End. It’s diverse, multifaceted, and covers a lot of ground. It never loses its heart of darkness though. The songs are bleak and nasty; they reek of grim corruption, urbanised violence, and sickening terror. Portrayal of Guilt embody the darkness of the times quite well.
Alongside this, against the odds in many ways, …Beginning of the End is also very, very good. As well as the delivery and execution, the songwriting that powers it all is strong. What could have been an incoherent mishmash of styles, a huge mess, is actually a comprehensive and engaging journey into the world of a band doing their own thing within the borderless realms of blackened hardcore/sludge.
Unconventional, unfriendly, but a damn good listen, …Beginning of the End is a strong record. Portrayal of Guilt have unleashed a monster.
Very highly recommended.
Wonderbox Metal 