Review: Insect Ark – Portal/Well

Insect Ark
Portal/Well

Autumnsongs Records
Street: 06.08
Insect Ark = King Woman + Locrian

Experimental sludge and smoldering, ambient drones smash back and forth unexpectedly in this record. Always instrumental and constantly bleak, Portal/Well seeps into the tarred marrow of your bones and grips, forcing emotional opisthotonos. “Collector” is especially bass-heavy, and Insect Ark exhibit this motif across the album, especially in light of the fact that frontwoman Dana Schechter is, by trade, a bassist. The title track features pinpricks of hallucinatory and nightmarish industrial grind. I’ve had to listen to this album in chunks because it forces me to marinate my psyche in my irrevocable fear of yawning, inky abysses that are both metaphorical and tangible. Pain is often translated into pleasure—Portal/Well is terrifying, and my indulgence thereof is intense and unabated. –LeAundra Jeffs