Portrayal of Guilt - Christfucker

Red with Black Splatter Vinyl - near mint condition

CHRISTFUCKER is the murkiest depths of their depravity thus far. A product of mushroom-addled hallucinations and sheer hostility, the band’s third LP is an extended feral bark, sludgier, murkier and with even less possibility of a ray of hope breaking through its bleak atmosphere.

Much of the album is spent lurching and churning rather than pursuing the more incendiary two-minute hardcore explosions for which Portrayal of Guilt is best known. The chorus-effect guitar that shimmers over the ghoulish bassline of “The Sixth Circle” finds the group pairing deathrock with death metal, a marriage made in hell that’s long overdue, and delivered with a menace that’s almost hedonistic. Where We Are Always Alone felt like a primal scream into the void of despair that’s threatened to swallow us whole for the past two years and then some, CHRISTFUCKER swan dives directly into its lightless center and embraces the vile horror that envelops it.

It’s oddly therapeutic. Something as deliberately vile as “…where the suffering never ends” is an invigorating tonic for dissolving the rust and scale, for a scalding to reawaken the senses. Everything about CHRISTFUCKER feels abrasive and dirty and wrong. And that feels strangely good.