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The Greek death metal community has had some heavy hitters in the last few decades or so, some of which incorporate some extremely bleak and dark, gloomy vibes into their creations. From the pioneering destructive outfit Rotting Christ to the more melodically dissonant Septicflesh, one could find quite a bit to enjoy if they look hard enough. One relatively novel act that originates from the country's capital and largest city of Athens is known simply, yet intimidatingly, by the name Plague. This Redefining Darkness Records-endorsed four piece has previously unveiled their debut single sometime in the mid 2010s...but now, they're back on the scene in full force and unleashed their debut full-length release titled Portraits of Mind: a seven track effort consisting of over 36 minutes of brutal content featuring artwork by Paolo Girardi, who's collaborated with similar artists like Artificial Brain as well as Nocturnal Graves. So let's get right into it!
There's a booming tremolo line that starts off the album on a somewhat devilishly blackened tone with some oldschool Entombed style progression and Corpsegrinder-esque vocals to boot. This effort does have its fair share of guitar solos, I just wanted to get that out there, along with some very strong melodic riffs that coincide with the blackened ambiance nicely a lot of the time. There's a wide variety of riffing, most of which sticks formidably aside from a couple of parts that kinda felt out of place or overdone in some regards, especially towards the end of the album when it starts to overstay its welcome. The running time is rather modest given the genre, but the songs pack in so much that it feels extremely ambitious for better or worse. The opening track really got me in an energetic mood with its fast pace, while other songs like 'Portal Into Reality' managed to capture the more rhythmically balanced and thrashy, nostalgic side of this album with its 80s style riffs. There's one more song called 'Cave of Vectors' that had some pretty memorable guitar solo parts and catchy bends that mixed in with some Gothenburg-like riffage. There's one part of the release towards the middle portion that has a fairly cool chromatic breakdown as well as one section in 'Shattering the Illusion' that also included a surprising bridge section. So there's definitely a ton of stuff I enjoyed in here; and the stellar production quality also helped highlighting those parts, too.
Portraits of Mind ups the ante at times with its well rounded mixture of oldschool death metal riffs, vox and vibes with newer age blackened ambiance, melodics and occasional blast beats, which can be associated with other similar acts of the same calibre such as Sweden's Necrophobic or Rotting Christ to an extent. Despite the album being sometimes repetitive in nature or rather cliche in the riffs or structure, there is still definitely enough surprising aspects related to the dark atmosphere and blended death metal solos, melodic backdrops and frequent sludgy, slower sections that gave me some 90s death metal feels as well. It's ultimately a hard-hitting above average extreme metal offering that does its job more than adequately throughout.
Fave Tracks: 'Portal Into Reality', 'Cave of Vectors'
**This release is available now here!**
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-Review by: Dave Raffy
Musician, reviewer, fan & promoter
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