Astrosaur – Portals
Release Date: 18th November 2022
Label: Pelagic Records
Bandcamp
Genre: Post-Metal, Doom, Psych, Stoner Rock, Jazz Rock, Progressive Rock.
FFO: Pelican, early Mastodon, Russian Circles, Psychonaut.
Review By: John Newlands
Portals is the third album for Astrosaur, an instrumental power-trio from Oslo, Norway, a band with a penchant for all things space and space travel. Their particular flavour of metal is not easy to pigeonhole but leans towards progressive, psych, free jazz, desert rock, doom and post-metal with the main focus on all songs – the RIFF!
For this new release, Astrosaur have moved away from their previous style of recording, where the main aim was to record the band sounding as close to the live experience as possible. I was pleased that Portals stepped away from this approach and allowed the band to explore instrumentation, layering and experimentation within the tracks and in my opinion taking the band into the upper echelons of instrumental metal with leaders such as Russian Circles and Pelican.
Despite the new recording style, Portals is still mixed and mastered to maintain the organic feel of the band, this is not the clean clinical recording of instrumental tech metal bands such as Animals As Leaders. You can notably hear the dual amp set-up of guitarist Eirik Kråkenes, note his use of guitar pedals and feel the impact of the locked in bass and drums from Steinar Glas and Jonatan Eikum. There is incredible musicianship on display here, but at no point do the band over-play and lose focus. Like in any good free-jazz band, each member understands the need for restraint to “play it straight”, the use of dynamics to progress the song and ultimately bowing down to the mighty riff.
Track 1, Opening, is the shortest offering on Portals at just under 4 minutes in length. The starts with some atmospheric reverse delay guitar before the weighty bass and drums begin to launch us up into the stratosphere and begin the Portals journey to places unknown and unexplored.
Track 2, Black Hole Earth, significantly picks up the pace from the opener and at points, the track feels like hurtling down the vortex of a black hole with pauses to take our breath, look around at the beautiful intergalactic view before we begin the maddening spiral into the wormhole again. It’s quite a rush and is reminiscent to this reviewer of the opening credits for Dr Who, but without the theremin. The track slows it down in the middle section, allowing the band to explore new ideas and motifs, before returning to the opening riff and closing out the track.
The Deluge is the third track of the album, and here Astrosaur recognise the need to slow the pace. This track has a more doom centric main riff which is as crushingly heavy, suitably progressive yet exciting and picks up the pace towards the end before returning again to the main doomy riff.
The band seamlessly navigates their way forward to Track 4 Reptile Empire, which picks up the pace with exciting new riffs reminiscent of early Mastodon, or the recent offering by Psychonaut. Another solid offering from the band.
Track 5, Eternal Return, is the albums magnum opus. At almost 24 minutes in length, it is almost 50% of the album. Some may consider to be a lot to swallow in one sitting, especially after the staggering ride of the first 4 tracks. However, Astrosaur seem to understand this, and masterfully guide the listener through the colossal finishers exciting and expressive passages by never taking it too far or losing sight of the phrases or motifs conjured throughout this epic journey.
The track starts and ends with the same motif, a single bell / cymbal chime, providing a circular feel to the song, and a fitting end to the album which feels like the vanishing point of a universe or beautiful blink of a star.
Sometimes 48 minutes feels too long, but Astrosaur somehow manage to make time bend around us. Without doubt, Portals is a lot to take in, but this album is made with expert guidance and craftsmanship from what I would consider leaders in the genre. “Back to back” spins of Portals may not be to the taste of most, but for this listener, a brief pause was enough before being ready for lift-off once again. 
(4.5 / 5)
