(((O))) Review: Portal to the God Damn Blood Dimension – Rotten Fruit; Regular Orchard

Everything about Rotten Fruit; Regular Orchard could be judged as over the top, pretentious and grandiose from the name, artwork and the scope of ambition in the music but it hits in a massively down to earth and sensationally brilliant way. With a combination of post-rock, screamo, spoken word, brass, strings and piano via two lengthy tracks Portal to the God Damn Blood Dimension absolutely delivers on every aspect that its appearance suggests.

With ‘Want’ rolling over 20 minutes and ‘Ashes’ over 14 minutes there is a lot of time covered without going overtly off course. If Respire went Godspeed post-rock instead of black metal and the narrative style of La Dispute was more aggressive then it may come to cover parts of the 30 minutes of music here. The flow is brilliant as it embraces space as well as exasperation and there are times when strings pluck like A Silver Mt Zion but the music often elevates to a screamo level with that beautiful post-rock base.

There is no rush here and it is music which also requires a similar mindset from the listener. Sure the music can offer a good service to a listener who has 5 or 6 minutes but the tracks need to be listened to as a whole to get the true impression of emotion and the rewards for the time are superb. For two tracks to be so long yet so engaging is a credit to the musicians here as the music flow keeps interest as the narrative builds and falls. There is nothing formulaic here and Portal to the God Damn Blood Dimension is inventive without being convoluted and offers equal parts pain and benediction, this is really stunning.