Review: Portrayal of Guilt

Metallic hardcore created "crossover," but how to brand a DIY liquefaction of black metal, proto-metal, death metal, grindcore, and post-industrial noise? "I just say punk," Matt King schooled the Chronicle back in January. "To me, punk is complete freedom."

Slam-dunking another red-letter year of new millennial conflagration – disintegration – Christfucker succeeds Portrayal of Guilt's first 2021 full-length, We Are Always Alone, by stripping back, distressing up, and utlimately battening the fuck down. Gone is the abject screamo of 2018 bow Let Pain Be Your Guide and ambient exsanguinations of Christfucker's predecessor. A marvel of tone and production, the Austin trio's third half-hour aneurysm mutates root metallurgies into a future missing link of punk extremity.

Hardly lo-fi, yet subtly folkloric in a core baseness of sound, the Nov. 5 ambush erases genre filters. Here, James Beveridge's cymbal play rings not some abstract metal, but rather brass, the alloy of copper and zinc. Lead-off "The Sixth Circle" beats an unholy nuclear clatter of desecration sonics, wherein the cold aural mass collides with a steamy bash and the ensuing storm front explodes into audio Armageddon.

Acid rain ("Fall From Grace"), grungy twang underlying atomized discordance ("Dirge"), angular riffage smelted into auricular arsenic ("Master/Slave"), seething hatred and flailing violence ("...where the suffering never ends"), Christfucker arrives ready-made for these end-times – nailed to the cross shrieking.