PORTAL TOMB Interview
If you follow what's new in contemprary crust, you will have heard of Montreal's PORTAL TOMB and their Last Frost Demo released on Sore Mind last year. I started a Signal group with Aíne and Ava to chat about the band.
Photos by Slim.
Martin Force: Who is in PORTAL TOMB and what were everyone's previous bands?
Aíne: PORTAL TOMB is: Aíne (guitar, vocals), Ava (Bass), Camil (Guitar), and Alys (Drums).
Alys (drums) has played in MOTORWOLF, SPORUS, MANDRAGORA, SHIBBOLETH, DISPHORIA, MST, DOMESTICATED, MORIBUND, VEIN SPLITTER, NIL CVLT DEATH GANG to give the shortlist. I've played previously in SPORUS, INFANTILE DISSENTION, NOTACOST, THERMOKARST, KNACKER'S YARD, and ATTRITION – maybe that's it? My memory is failing as I descend into my twilight years... I played in THE FACTORY SMOKE to name another Trad folk band. I've done some work with Vancouver's NORILLAG, although I'm not a member.
For Ava and Camil (guitar), this is their first fully fleshed out project, though I believe Ava is working on a few things behind the scenes.
MF: How did the band start? You and Alys both played together in SPORUS and moved here? Were you already planning to start something?
Aíne: Alys and I have known each other for years, both of us coming from Victoria, BC. We played together for years in SPORUS (now based in Vancouver). Ava and Camil come from Brooklyn, NY and Sofia, Bulgaria respectively. PORTAL TOMB was initially something I had planned as a recording project for many years, but came to fruition instead as a full band after I met Ava here in Montreal and started plotting a Stenchcore/Crust project together. I knew Alys was the one to play drums when things started coming together in the writing process, largely because she's a way better drummer than me haha. It's rare to find someone with both her technical skill and the energy and style for punk on the drums. I met Camil through work, and they learned everything we had worked on for almost a year in about 30 minutes, so the choice for second guitar was obvious.
Ava: Aíne wanted to do PORTAL TOMB as a solo project but I was like if you need help let me know hehe and then Aíne taught me the riffs and we went from there. Aíne took me under their wing / a leap of faith with me cause I had only really been playing bass in my room for a couple years and never saw myself playing in a band for some reason. But we had really similar music tastes and they took a chance on me and now we are besties and have awesome band with Alys and Camil.
MF: How did you find Camil?
Aíne: Camil was my metalhead coworker who recognized all my band shirts until I was like "I bet you play the guitar. I bet you play the guitar better than me, you should join my Crust band." And convinced them by saying it'll be "kind of like BOLT THROWER" (lying). Also a leftist metalhead. Hired.
MF: Is it true that you made Camil wear a bullet belt?
Ava: Yes.
Aíne: Debatable.
Ava: And told him no more vans. It's true.
Aíne: Yeah that definitely happened.
MF: How you define PORTAL TOMB? Just pure stenchcore?
Aíne: I think of PORTAL TOMB as Stenchcore/Crust. I'm sure the details are irrelevant, but to say Stenchcore to me distinguishes it somewhat from the more limited genre that Crust has in some ways become. When I think of Stenchcore I think of a more experimental, raw, and extreme sound that shows more of it's Anarcho-Punk, Metal, and Post-Punk roots. It's all Crust in the end.
Ava: We like da British stuffs.
MF: Is Portal Tomb a queer band? A band with queers in it? How do you bring your respective queer identities to playing crust?
Aíne: CRUST IS GAY WHAT CAN WE DO.
Ava: We gay.
MF: What was the process like for writing and recording the Last Frost Demo?
Aíne: Excruciating.
Some riffs I had for years, or had many variations of for years, and some were written more recently to build context for the songs. Ava and I poured over arrangements for many months while we worked out the general direction of things, and then we started putting things together with me swapping between guitar and drums.
When Alys joined the band, she took the drums to a place I couldn't have personally and I got to focus on guitar and we tweaked the arrangements for a while together, and when Camil came in we had the opportunity to add some harmonies and play the tracks endlessly until they felt right. For recording, it was all DIY at Ham space using odds and ends I packed here from the West coast and whatever we could find. The drums were recorded in 4 tracks, no tom mics, and a mono tape recorder in the room buried in the mix somewhere.
The mix took a lifetime with pretty limited gear and some pretty sloppy recording work on my part. In the end I think we more or less captured the sound we were aiming for, and Cody Baresich at Circle A Studios did a perfect job translating that with mastering for the tape/digital release. I would never finish anything without his help, let alone know how to hold a microphone in the first place. Long live Cody.
MF: There's a new recording coming out soon. Was the process for that smoother? How will it be released?
Aíne: At the moment we're finishing editing our next release to send to Circle A Studios for mixing and mastering. I think I can speak for everyone in saying this recording was significantly more excruciating. Endless technical difficulties and broken gear, a dead computer, and more suffering in general. It's DIY once again, but I think in the end we pushed through to a stronger recording – and one that's more representative of where the band is at now. The track/tracks are for a short and nasty split with our dear friends, Vancouver's EXTENSIVE SLAUGHTER to be released as a 7" on Archaic Records and tape on Montreal's Sore Mind.
MF: Beyond the new release, what are upcoming live shows or tour plans you all are excited about?
Aíne: We'll be playing SCORCHED EARTH in Vancouver with DEVIATED INSTINCT, STORMCROW, and East coast crust legends CONTAGIUM in June, among many other insane crust acts, and a day before that in Victoria with HEDONIST and STREET GLOVES. We'll also be at A Varning From Montreal again in the fall. Not much for tour plans, but we'll be playing some sneaky dates in the eastern states this summer. Boston/New York/Philly.
Ava: I wanna play Mexico with PORTAL TOMB.
MF: What other current or in-the-works side projects you want to tell us about?
Ava: I’m working on vocals with a project. That’s all I can disclose because it’s still sort of up in air if we will release anything – depends how bad I suck.
Aíne: I play a fair bit of traditional Celtic folk music when I have the time, but no other bands at the moment. As for Alys, as far as I know she's a current member of MOTORWOLF, MANDRAGORA, and NIL CVLT.
MF: Is crust back? Did it ever leave? What are some current bands you think are doing crust right or that get you excited about crust?
Aíne: I think Crust tends to persist regardless of who's paying attention. It does seem like interest comes and goes, and as far as listenership/a general scene I think we're seeing another wave of revival – a resurgence in interest around the old school sound. My uneducated opinion is that as things get stale in the punk trends, people find renewed inspiration by looking back to the classic bands who approached things with a different ethos and paved the way. Bands that didn't have to navigate the type of commodification we see in what looks now more like a market relationship with "punk characteristics."
Some current bands I find inspiring off the top of my head are FATUM, CANCER SPREADING, LIFE, INSTINCT OF SURVIVAL. Lots of good stuff out of New York at the moment like FLOWER, LOVE AND COMPASSION, MMI, the short lived WITNESS. Vancouver's EXTENSIVE SLAUGHTER, some solid US acts like ALEMENT, AXEFEAR, SAVAGE PLEASURE. There are many more, and classics who won't quit like DEVIATED INSTINCT, and dear Jesus CONTAGIUM is back baby!! BLACK DOG is incredible and although they're no longer playing, ZYGOME is a massive influence for me. I swear I'm not trying to steal their riffs... Locally, WARKRUSHER and A.T.E.R. are keeping it very real.
Ava: My list is: LOVE AND COMPASSION, WITNESS (RIP), ALEMENT, SAVAGE PLEASURE, SPORUS, TERMINAL FILTH. I’m not as big of a fan of the war-metal leaning crust cause I think it gets stale and sort of misses the point: the somber or nihilistic atmosphere a lot of great old crust captures. CONTAGIUM is incredible one of the best crust projects of late I’ve heard – Aíne put me onto them cause I had no idea about them.
MF: What do you all think about the current state of punk in general? Is there too much Instagram and Spotify? I feel like this is less of a problem in the crust sub-genre but there are still crust Instagram accounts and all that. How bad is it and what can we do?
Ava: Prioritize bands that don’t feed into it. It’s tricky because there’s striking a balance as people who put a lot of time into their music need to find ways to feed themselves but good punk music is antithetical to money making and forms of capitalization . Spotify doesn’t make you any money/is exploitative which is part of the issue but it can help find listeners who aren’t tapped into DIY... but I personally don’t want to put PORTAL TOMB on Spotify. I’m not sure if YouTube is necessarily better (because Google) but I think accounts that serve as like digital distros sort of like reposting punk stuff they like for more people to see is good? But I don’t know how to understand the matrix. Bandcamp seems like the most ethical way to digitally access stuff to me.
Aíne: Spotify can lick my asshole and Instagram is an ideological hellworld. Those things have nothing to do with punk in my opinion, and while I understand their utility in promotion, fuck all of that. There's no ethical consumption under capitalism, but the problem with these technologies not only in their effect on art, but their role in the military industrial complex cannot be understated. I think the current state of punk is rife with contradiction. In some ways punk appears more alive than it has been in a long time, in other ways it can feel more empty and disingenuous than ever. I think it's probably what we make of it. I think if punk really needs Spotify or Instagram to survive, it's already dead.
Ava: There’s a lot of interest in crust from my age group but a lot of it seems fashion focused / crust pants-centric as opposed to putting most energy into creating interesting music. Seems like a lot of copy / paste with the aesthetics and run of the mill musical regurgitation.
But it’s great that the “scene” is more active and so many people come support. I think people my age can get caught up in this punk Instagram clout and conforming to what they think is cool on the internet. Maybe they put too much focus on things like fashion or self presentation above making music and embodying the values behind the aesthetic. I think it’s because we are all so young and many of us former misfits and having crust is a way to “fit in” and find others like us when we are all trying to decide who/how/what we want to be.
Tons of kids my age are also learning their instruments to be in bands which is great. I just got lucky to be taken under Aíne’s wing otherwise I’d probably just be writing stuff in voice memos in my room. I'm really happy to see more people my age interested and committed to it but I think a lot of the focus on aesthetics, self fashioning and presentation over social media is corny. Not to say I don’t think about my crust pants a lot. But it’s not all about studding and acquiring every bootleg tee under the sun.
Regarding Spotify and Instagram, they don’t need those things. But coming from my perspective as Gen Z they have, for better or for worse, gotten a lot more people to “tune in” so they can “tune out.” My demographic grew up in a totally digital age. And a lot of the crust resurgence does ultimately stem from social media. And then the real ones focus on showing up to shows and making shit. It was a gateway.
For me it was all through YouTube. I watched Decline of Western Civilization when I was 11 (it was free on YouTube) and then everything went from there. I had already been listening to goth/post punk because I had a childhood friend who’s dad was really into it and he showed me stuff.
And then I just started finding more shit through the algorithm. Getting into punk has made me focus on connecting IRL but it my path into it came from the digital realm. My demographic has a lot of toxic individualism perpetuated through social media and a consequence of how capitalism has progressed which has lead to social isolation and deprivation of real life experiences. Punk saved me from that and made me be active in my own life outside of a screen and my bedroom
MF: What makes good crust pants?
Ava: Time
Aíne: There's a (Japanese?) zine on how to make crust pants, and it's a 10/10 read. Extremely funny and everything you need to know
MF: Anything I missed that you want to shout out?
Aíne: The State and Capital are a social relationship and must be rooted out firstly from our minds. THERE'S NO AUTHORITY BUT YOURSELF, OBJECT, REFUSE, AND REJECT ABUSE!
Listen to the Last Frost Demo here: https://portaltomb.bandcamp.com/album/last-frost-demo
First press on Sore Mind and second press on Filth Holocaust are sold out!
Portal Tomb
Contact PORTAL TOMB by e-mail: portaltomb @ gmail.com