Portrayal Of Guilt Bring The Insular Apocalypse

Expectations can be a bitch. Unrealistic expectations can be such a bitch. Sometimes, when you’re going to see a band you really like for the first time, unrealistic expectations are the only kind that you can manage. That’s how I was with Portrayal Of Guilt. That band makes a sound so dark and huge and pulverizing that I half-anticipated them coming out onstage spitting blood-geysers into the sky like Triple H with the water bottle. A friend once referred to Portrayal Of Guilt as “the Misfits of screamo,” and that’s what I wanted them to be. But no. They’re just some guys — guys who make huge, dark, pulverizing music, but guys nonetheless. It’s not their fault that they’re not mystical demon-wraiths. It’s my fault for thinking, somewhere in the darkest recesses of my mind, that they might be.