With Vexovoid, the Australian death metal aberration known as Portal refines its sonic grotesquery into a sharper, more calculated form. Still drenched in murk and otherworldly dissonance, this record marks a pivotal moment in their discography—one where the band embraces clarity without sacrificing the suffocating atmosphere that defines their identity. Portal has always conjured imagery rather than traditional songcraft, and here that imagery feels even more vivid. If earlier albums were chaotic storms, Vexovoid is the architecture left behind in the aftermath—decaying, cyclopean structures that bend physics and time. Each track leads further into an impossible geometry, with “Orbmophia” and “Awryeon” pushing deeper into the void while clinging to threadbare notions of form. Far from a compromise, Vexovoid is a triumph of restraint and vision. It channels the same unsettling energies that made Portal infamous, but with a new focus that sharpens the horror rather than dulling it. It may be more accessible in structure, but that makes the terror within all the more potent. This is death metal as psychological disintegration, refined into its most haunting form.