Regarding young Death Metal bands, one generally has a very wide range of references to choose from. When it comes to analysing their sound it is sometimes hard to distinguish unique features because seemingly “all has been done before” in that particular genre of Metal. With TOMB PORTAL, things are a little different. The Encyclopaedia Metallum entry on the band contains only scant information. TOMB PORTAL have not only been active for a rather short time (since 2022) and come from Budapest. So far, the band only released one demo; “Enthanatogen” is their first full-length album. Two of the songs on “Enthanatogen” have Icelandic (!) titles; all of the lyrics are in Hungarian. This fact and the singer’s growl make them rather incomprehensible, which does not, however, affect the quality of the music. The idea of a somewhat exotic status of the band that might be gathered from these facts can nevertheless instantly be discarded once one starts delving into the sound. Old school Death Metal it is, grinding with heavy grooves reminding the listener of many of our heroes who started out in the late 1980s and early 1990s. All songs of the album are characterised by a finely tuned mix of slower and faster passages, a feature many groundbreaking Death Metal bands have in common. Within this frame, ‘The Grey City’ and ‘Catacombs In The Subconscious’ stand out for me as recommendations, with the latter being perhaps the fastest song on the album. ‘Dreymandi Hryllingur’, on the other hand, has doomy parts sewn into the soundscape which remind me of ASPHYX. ‘Interdimensional Regurgitation’ is a slow, groovy and absolutely pounding song that has more than just a touch of OBITUARY to it. If anything can be said to sum up the noise TOMB PORTAL bring to us, it certainly is a dark and sinister atmosphere evoking associations of the Florida Death Metal scene with bands like MORBID ANGEL or OBITUARY and European veterans such as ASPHYX and BOLT THROWER. For more information on the Budapest-based “Metal hive” to which TOMB PORTAL belong, see www.facebook.com/bonechapelcollective. Their label is www.morbidchapelrecords.com.