Amethyst Portal (Music Review) Rachel Audrey & Gavin Norman's Project

Rachel Audrey

So far there is a visible disbalance between the posts about music and films in my blog. So finally, here is one more article where I'm suggesting another mysterious and brilliant music project too few people know about.

 

What Amethyst Portal Sounds Like

On the official Amethyst Portal's Facebook page the genre is specified as "Occult Industrial". However, it's not that kind of industrial with the standard 4/4 or 3/4 beat and verse-chorus structure. It's a calm, relaxing ambient music with a mysterious otherworldly vibe—dark, spooky, and with horror elements here and there. The lyrics are clearly based on the New Age mythology and Occultism.

 

Band Members

Amethyst Portal is a side project of two members of a better-known musical collective Mater Suspiria Vision: Gavin Norman (music) and Rachel Audrey (lyrics and vocals).

If you are a frequent or occasional reader of my blog, you must already know Rachel as the actress starring in Cosmotropia de Xam's film Phantasmagoria that I advised to my readers last spring (and for those who don't know what Mater Suspiria Vision is, I'm talking about them in my review of the soundtrack to the film Phantasmagoria).

As for Gavin Norman, I don't know much about him, but as the pictures on his Facebook page show, he is clearly a part of Cosmotropia de Xam's artistic crew, and he seems to have worked on the Phantasmagoria dilogy. Apart from that, Gavin is an RPG designer, and he sells retro games on his site with a funny name Necrotic Gnome.

The project Amethyst Portal seems to be inactive or in hibernation: the earliest song published on their Bandcamp is dated August 19, 2017, and the latest—March 24, 2018.

There are eight songs in total, and now I'm going to go over them, talking a bit about each.

Song for Solar Eclipse (August 19, 2017)

If we consider all the published songs from Amethyst Portal's Bandcamp arranged in the chronological order as an album, this one looks like an intro. It's nice but not catchy enough to be easily memorized. Instead, it just creates an intrigue and expectation of what's coming up next.

 

Lunar Emanation (August 19, 2017)

Here is where I dive really deeply into this weird and comfortable feeling of nonexistence.

The song starts with Rachel's mantra-style chanting and whispering something about what I suppose to be a deity named Sophia who is also mentioned in her other song or two. A non-standard drum rhythm with the rest of the instruments kick in, and Rachel's calming, cool voice goes on praising that radiant, resonant elemental, whoever this creature is, using a series of intricate epithets.

The tone of Rachel's voice in this song makes me imagine her as a teacher dictating a lecture for students to write it down. It must be a lecture in an extremely private and esoteric class. A class for little Illuminates, I guess.

 

7th Gate (December 31, 2017)

I'm not sure which gate they mean exactly, but when listening to the song, I have a feeling that it's the same type of gate Venom also used to sing about, if you know what I mean. The song takes you to the creepier side of mystery.

There is also a male voice here. Probably, Gavin's.

 

Surrounded by Obelisks (December 31, 2017)

This is a completely instrumental song with a kinder vibe that eases a little bit a listener scared by the previous composition.

 

Blue Blood (Amethyst Portal Temple Remix) (January 21, 2018)

This is the first song of the project that I've heard (while visiting their Bandcamp page for the first time, I chose it initially among the rest because I like the blue color), and it stays one of my most favorite ones.



The music has a sorrowful mood, and the lyrics meet it.

I offer you roses, the stars in the sky

I offer you sorrow, the tears that I cry

These lines often randomly come to my mind and keep spinning there for some time. I even used them in my cover song of Metamorfose der Bestien by Mater Suspiria Vision.

Again, Priestess Sophia is mentioned here. She seems to be a pretty important egregore from the anal projection or something like that.

The song is actually a remix of the collaboration song by EvɇrSeenΔ Ghøstbɇfoɍe and Rachel Audrey—Blue Blood:

The original is nice, but I love Amethyst Portal's version even more.

 

Hidden Chamber (January 29, 2018)

It's supposed to be a horror song. Rachel is whispering something about a "ceremonia macabra within a hidden chamber".

This reminds me of the film The Devil's Men / Land of the Minotaur (1976) by Kostas Karagiannis about a cult of Minotaur in a remote Greek village. There was a hidden chamber where the evil village residents sacrificed tourists.

The statue of the Minotaur (voiced by someone who had a brilliant voice for this role), pronounced in a extremely creepy way:

"Those who enter the forbidden chamber of the Minotaur... Must die!"

I don't know if Rachel was inspired by this film when creating this song, but this is what I remember every time I listen to it.

This song is actually pretty funny instead of being scary. Rachel attempts to make an evil growling voice, but it turns laughable and cute. Sounds like a little girl of 4 years old is trying to impersonate an evil witch. I always laugh when listening to this song.

 

Eleven And None (February 25, 2018)

This is one of my favorites too.

Over a simple tribal drum beat and spooky synth pad melody, Rachel is talking in a quite aggressively-seductive tone impersonating the voluptuous night sky, presenting it as a female deity who is in a pretty specific mood at the moment, if you know what I mean.

Then she pronounces a weird phrase "Every man and every woman is a star". After that, suddenly a simple but so efficient synthesizer tune starts playing. And it feels like sudden opening of a portal to heaven.

That phrase also makes me think every time "But not every man or woman is a rock star, baby".

 

An Astral Chant (March 24, 2018)

I remember listening to this song for the first time. It was so exciting to suddenly realize it was a cover of one of my favorite classic rock bands. One of the most original covers ever made, for sure.

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