Band:	Plague
Album:	Portraits Of Mind
Style:	Death metal
Release date:	February 2020

01. Intersperse
02. Portal Into Reality
03. Pandemic
04. Deranged Madness
05. Cave Of Vectors
06. Shattering The Illusion
07. Mind Control

Plague is a death metal band from Greece and Portraits Of Mind is their debut full-length.

The above sentence is a no-nonsense introduction that seems fitting for this no-nonsense old school death metal album. I decided to add this record to my now ridiculously big stack of waiting-to-be-done reviews after a fellow Metalstormer commented on last year's Blood Incantation album by saying "gone are the days when death metal songs used to be 3-5 minutes long". Also, the band's name and the fact that they have a song called "Pandemic" both feel very appropriate for the times we are living in right now.

Plague simplify things as much as they are allowed to do so, given the fact that their death metal recipe includes a certain complexity in the riffing and the song structures. Taking its cues from the '90s Floridian scene, Portraits Of Mind has a sound that comes very close to Death, and particularly the albums Leprosy and Spiritual Healing with a touch of Human. However, Plague are not a tribute band mirroring these particular albums in the way Gruesome do, they are just highly influenced by them. And some Massacre vibes are there too.

As soon as you go past the outstanding cover artwork by Paolo Girardi and get to the music, you will find that what really stands out on this album is the excessive amount of sick (yeah, I wasn't going to lose this opportunity) riffs that are heard in every song. The music is technical and proggy enough so as not to get boring but at the same time it doesn't overwhelm you with constant changes and the duration of the tracks does not exceed the patience of those whose attention span is short. However, when I heard the best track and album closer, "Mind Control", it became clear to me that the only issue with this record is that comparisons are bound to be made with its source of inspiration, and as good as Portraits Of Mind may be, it can never win a contest against anything released by Death. But then again, not many death metal albums can win such a contest.

Comparisons aside, Plague's debut is a no-gimmicks OSDM album with no experimentation, no genre-bending moments, and no risks taken. It has on-point production, admirable performances, and it just focuses on riffs that will turn your head into a windmill. In the band's own words, their purpose was to "deliver a fair representation of what their sound consists of: darkness, intensity, rawness & ass-kicking death metal". This purpose has been more than served.