After parting ways with Hydra Head last year, Malefic, aka longtime West Coast USBM loner Scott Conner, self-released/wholesaled his final Xasthur album Portal Of Sorrow. (He's said his next project will likely be non-metal.) I received a CDR from Portal collaborator Marissa Nadler a number of months ago, but the 14-song collection finally saw official release this month. On one hand, the melding of folk, bleak ambient, goth, and metal isn't new, but the lo-fi, warping way Conner and Nadler go about it can be exciting and bracing. As mentioned in Haunting The Chapel's Year-End Top 50, I ultimately liked the idea of the collaboration more than the album itself -- I'm sort of obsessed with that kind of dark cross-pollination, a la Chelsea Wolfe's Burzum cover or White Ring, etc. -- but when Conner's smashed-mirror atmospherics and strangulated raven howl collide just-so with Nadler's otherworldly, dusky voice, it's a stunner. A couple of those moments:
Xasthur - "Broken Glass Christening"
The "single":
Xasthur - "Horizon Of Plastic Caskets"
Portal Of Sorrow is out via Kemado. Keep up with Xasthur at his site.
