Rockfreaks.net

support Müscle Wörship + Demersal
author AP date 26/04/23 venue Basement, Copenhagen, DEN

The April concert train steams ahead, and while it has been logistically impossible for me to get off at each and every stop worth the effort, one of the shows that I was not prepared to miss this Spring was Portrayal of Guilt’s return to Denmark for the first time since 2019 — and now as the headliners. Admittedly, I was not completely sold on the young trio four years ago, but their new album “Devil Music”, which dropped only a week before this show, created a renewed sense of intrigue around them that I could not ignore. I had to experience the material in the live setting, and the barren confines of the Basement venue in Copenhagen seemed to offer the ideal locale for these songs to come into their own.

Demersal

As per custom, Demersal’s set begins with a calm before the storm, with guitarists Viktor Ravn and Sebastian Andersen picking clean notes from their fretboards to produce a shoegaze style in the opener “Relentless”, taken from their 2020 début album “Less”. But this soon gives way to an eruption of raw anguish that sends the entire band into a frenzy. Bassist Jonas Maigaard in particular is a live wire, stomping the floor, kicking the air, and ultimately collapsing to his knees from the sheer emotional weight of the music. Around him, Ravn and Andersen trade screams back and forth, wearing expressions that are equal parts angst and menace, the latter’s shriller style juxtaposing the deeper growls of the former. The opening track lays out the formula for the rest of Demersal’s performance, which oscillates between bursts of unbridled energy and more resigned, introspective segments, and while it does not result in a whole lot of variety during the eight tracks that comprise the quartet’s setlist, it is hard to deny the appeal of their intense stage presence. The four musicians are never still, and always fully immersed in the likes of their 2022 single “Pulling Flowers from the Garden of Your Heart”, while the raw, concrete setting that the venue provides creates the perfect backdrop for their DIY ethos. It all culminates with the titular “Less”, which sees Ravn becoming fully unhinged, violently throwing his guitar onto the floor and knocking down his microphone stand so that it very nearly hits the frontmost crowd, before he, too, crashes onto his knees in throes of passion — an intense ending to the kind of furious show one has come to expect from this outfit.

Müscle Wörship

It is hard to pigeonhole this Lawrence, KS-formed trio into any one genre — this much is obvious from their opening track “Jesus Vs the Lord” off their 2013 self-titled album. There is a touch of Rancid’s punk to it, but as the subsequent tracks reveal, there are also undercurrents of garage rock, post-punk and psychedelic music present. This is most pronounced in the unique style of frontman Sean Bergman’s handling of his guitar. He makes almost constant use of a Floyd Rose locking vibrato arm to create fluid melodies with a distinct twang about them, feeding off bassist Pete Biasi’s grooves and complementing drummer Giovanni Stimamiglio’s jagged rhythms. His voice, on the other hand, is of the gruff punk discipline and as such not too dissimilar to Off With Their Heads’ Ryan Young, producing an overall sound that should, for all intents and purposes, be right up my alley. But while I’ll gladly admit to being mesmerised by some of the songs, such as the moody pairing of “Burton” and “Psychonaut’s Prayer” around the halfway mark, there is a lack of obvious hooks and standout moments that makes a lot of it blend together. As it stands here, the most memorable thing about Müscle Wörship’s set is the tipsy banter offered by Biasi in between some of the tracks, fuelled, no doubt, by the shots of booze he carried onto the stage before the group’s performance. “A Firebreather Carefully Sobs” ends the show on a high note, not least by virtue of some inspired drumming by Stimamiglio, which spurs a portion of the crowd to flash their dance moves, and urges the rest of us to make a mental note about checking this band out on record the next day.

Portrayal Of Guilt

If one had to distill this band’s music into a single word, it would have to be intense. It is dark and visceral in both sound and theme… which probably renders it quite surprising for those watching Portrayal of Guilt live for the first time tonight, that the trio’s performance is extremely introverted. But their demeanour is not like that of shoegaze bands — no, it is more like the quiet kids in black. extreme metal hoodies that tend to unsettle others with their mere presence. The three musicians offer no words of introduction before or after their opening track “Daymare” off their 2018 début album “Let Pain Be Your Guide”, no banter in between the songs, no goodbye in the end of their set. They simply unleash one cascade of black metal, grindcore and screamo fusions after the other, often using BDSM references as metaphors for anxiety and other difficult emotions in songs like the titular “Devil Music” near the end of the show: “Frigid and pale, my hands are tied behind my back (…) Her cold touch grazes my cheek before her fingers enter my mouth (…) No one will ever hurt me the way you do.” That sense of disquiet is accentuated by the subtle hints of ominous psychedelia spliced into some of the songs. “Anesthetized” (taken from the first one of the band’s two 2021 outings: “We Are Always Alone”) for example features an eerie bass riff by Blake Given that resembles something you might find on a song by Oranssi Pazuzu, while “Fall from Grace” (off the second one: “CHRISTFUCKER”), starts with an atonal, broken carousel piano sounding from a backing track, before a tide of blastbeats and icy tremolo guitar is unleashed.

The dim lighting and distorted shapes projected onto the peeling concrete wall behind the band do their part as well, in conjuring an esoteric and menacing atmosphere from which it is difficult to escape. One feels trapped in a nightmare, a cacophony of noise and sudden rhythm changes rendered unnerving by the three musicians’ insistence on standing almost completely still. There is this constant sense of dread that something terrible is about to happen as tracks such as “The Crucifixion”, its genre aberrant rhythm keeping the audience on their toes, and the penultimate “One Last Taste of Heaven”, which draws the crowd in by way of an eerie slow-burning intro and then delivers an absolute hammering in the second half. The ground is vibrating from the noise being generated by Portrayal of Guilt, and by the time the aforementioned “Devil Music” brings the regular set to a close, the frontmost portion of the audience is caught in a mad mosh. Their efforts are paid off with the 2019 single “Sacrificial Rite”, which rounds off this paradox of a show — played with introversion and nihilism, yet resulting in an intense and unforgettable experience for everyone watching.

Setlist:

• 1. Daymare
• 2. Anesthetized
• 3. Fall from Grace
• 4. Sadist
• 5. …where the suffering never ends
• 6. The Crucifixion
• 7. Burning Hand
• 8. The Sixth Circle
• 9. One Last Taste of Heaven
• 10. devil music

— Encore —

• 11. Sacrificial Rite