From very early days, Portrait has been hailed as the band who play music that everyone would love hear on a Mercyful Fate album. I suppose, to an extent, they could even be called a Mercyful Fate/King Diamond worship band. But hey, how many others are there? Not too many at all! At least not ones that can pull it off this goddamn well! They fill a gap in the ‘market’: This is some remarkable dark classic Heavy Metal! Back to the 80s-style (done well, not forcefully retro-y).
A new singer has entered the frame too (pun intended) and lots of dismaying talk followed. After some not-so-impressive live appearances a good bunch of people had written the band off, nostalgically talking of the good-ol’-days. Anyways, the new vocalist is Per Karlsson and he most certainly is more skilled than his predecessor. On this album he sounds great. His range is immense and does the falsetto seemingly with complete ease. His vocals are very reminiscent to King Diamond, maybe with some Eric Wagner mixed in there too. However, he is by no means the best vocalist in the world and does, time to time, miss some notes rather obviously/badly. His overall performance is excellent though and I, for one, hail him as the awesome new Portrait vocalist!
Necromorbus’ Tore Stjerna (Destroyer 666, Watain) is responsible for the sound and he performs flawlessly. One would think that this, being a Metal Blade release would just end up being the downfall of this band, with clean and modern production taking over great music, but no! The Necromorbus sound fits this baby perfectly. Incredibly satisfying!
Guitarists Lagergren and Lindell shred akin Shermann and LaRocque, following Portrait’s line of great guitar work (some excellent leads/solos throughout the album!). ‘Crimen Laesae Majestatis Divinae’ is chiefly guitar driven and a lot of work has clearly gone into balancing sections without losing eye on the song-writing. So whilst the guitars are pushing the extremes, it’s quite the different story with the drumming. There just isn’t all that much going on. It provides the beat but doesn’t experiment much, following very basic patterns. This becomes particularly apparent as the songs are longer-than-average, sometimes seemingly even somewhat dragging. However, Portrait know what they’re doing and soon pick up the pace by throwing one of the various aces they seem to have hidden up their sleeve onto the table. Meanwhile the bass thunders along and adds depth to the whole damn thing, just as it should.
So we get a dosage of Mercyful Fate and King Diamond, glimpses of occult NWOBHM, Agent Steel, Trouble, Manilla Road and other more apparent Heavy Metal gods. What more do you want? You guessed it, I’m going to join Rock Hard, Terrorizer and many other Rock/Metal mags in saying that this album kicks ass. As a reviewer you usually try your best to not be influenced by press-releases that (obviously) have nothing but one-sided praise for the record, but this just sums it up perfectly: “You can only describe this album as the wet dream of any fan of heavy metal. [This] is metal in its purest form — relentless, energy-driven, complex, dark, catchy and HEAVY!" Cheers!
http://www.portraitband.se
Miika Virtanen
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