Description
For almost 20 years, Portrait from Sweden have delivered their 'heavy metal darkness' to the world. The bands' development since the debut demo in 2006 is remarkable. Ever since then, Portrait has managed to develop and stretch their sound into several territories, without losing touch with their original core.
Following up 2021's acclaimed At One With None, the band returns with their sixth album The Host. "The Host is our first concept album. The story takes place in 17th century era Sweden and revolves around an unnamed protagonist who, because of his experiences with the injustice and hypocrisy of this world, decides to seek truth and strength through its' Adversary."
The album "is a versatile entity, showing all sides of what has become our own style of heavy metal, identity and sense of melody, yet with some new areas explored in several directions. There are songs that are our fastest and most 'extreme' so far along with songs of an almost semi-ballad feeling. It blends perfectly together musically and fits the dramaturgy of the story."
The album was recorded in JFK Studio in Sweden and the mixing and production tasks were handled by singer Per Lengstedt in his own Perilous Productions Studio. "It was a challenging task for sure. The album has 13 songs and the duration is almost twice as long as what would be considered normal. The important thing was to conjure up a production that would fit all aspects of the album, the aggressive and fast songs as well as the slower ones. It was a challenge, but there were also a lot of advantages with doing this myself instead of having to explain things to others and instruct them to do it. We are all in the end very satisfied with how the album turned out, both production and song wise. All killers, no fillers. There is so much going on in every song that we are convinced that even the youngsters of today with an average attention span of 5 seconds will be able to let go of their phone for some focused quality listening of the album in full, to experience and to receive..."
