No Red Tape for Portal – “Blood Red Tape” has Success Written All Over It!

December, 2008 – It’s been seven years since Portal leapt onto the local music scene by winning the final installment of Kokanee’s Adopt-A-Band Challenge at Urban Lounge. Urban Lounge has collapsed and moved, the other bands from the competition have folded, and even most of the sponsors from the event have all but disappeared. Portal, on the other hand, have just released their fourth anthology, and if early reviews are any indication, Portal seem poised to take their greatest leap to date - onto the world stage. Blood Red Tape is already drawing Portal comparisons to contemporary progressive rock greats such as Tool, Porcupine Tree, and Dream Theater, but the album might be just what the band needs to finally elevate itself above the need for comparison and stand on their own two feet.

Portal emerged from a three-year hibernation at the end of August, wielding a seventy minute collection of songs that even long-time fans and supporters have described as “unexpectedly evolved”. While not a concept album in the strictest sense, Blood Red Tape contains some very focused themes, and its production, packaging, and branding all serve to support its message, one of social awareness and responsibility. The album contains the same complex rhythms and progressions that Portal has become known for, but with a production quality and attention to detail far exceeding that of its predecessors. From the groove-laden first single, Back in the Day, a future-set nostalgia for a present-day crumbling empire, to ten minute epic Your Kettle, a cinematic journey which was just licensed for inclusion on an upcoming Wii release, Blood Red Tape is brimming with layer after layer of seamless meter changes, soaring melodies, and instrumental twists and turns.

And these facts have not gone un-noticed. Portal was selected Band of the Month for November on Sonic 102.9 in their home-town of Edmonton, and were selected for inclusion on Big Rock’s Untapped Artists Compilation, due for release in tandem with the Juno Awards this Spring. Songs from Blood Red Tape are already climbing www.Garageband.com  progressive and modern rock charts, and eleven-minute epic The Kingdom has reached #5 on Warsaw’s ActiveRock Radio, which in 2005 selected Portal as Independent Band of the Year. In addition, ‘Back in the Day’, Blood Red Tape’s first single, has seen weekly additions to commercial and college radio stations across North America since the album’s release, and is showing no signs of abating.

“It’s easy to get caught with your head down in this business,” says front-man and producer Kenton Thomas. “People forget that there are almost a billion people who don’t speak English just in Latin America and Europe alone, but they’re big music fans too. Considering today’s tumultuous political atmosphere, it’s not only important to reach out to them, but it’s also appreciated much more than most people here realize – not to mention incredibly easy to do with the tools we have at our disposal in the Communications age.”

Although the band is currently making efforts to “internationalize” Blood Red Tape’s website with help from fans around the world, language has never been a barrier to the group’s international appeal. “Right from the beginning, when the original Napster was our key to success, we’d get downloads from people all over the world,” says Thomas. “Russia, Australia, South Africa, Brazil – our website gets hits from every corner of the globe. I think the subject matter has a lot to do with our success. Our music is very socially conscious, and not just with respect to our society, but with respect to a world society. Whether English is your first language or not, I think the music emotes that vibe.”

Portal’s new CD, Blood Red Tape, is currently available via either of their websites at www.bloodredtape.com  or www.portalband.com .

For additional information or a sample copy, contact:

PORTAL, c/o Kenton Thomas
11411 90 St NW
Edmonton, AB T5B 3X8
Canada
Phone: 780-232-7848
www.portalband.com 
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Web:
www.portalband.com
www.bloodredtape.com
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EPK:  www.sonicbids.com/portal
 

Blood Red Tape is a seventy-minute masterpiece, even by big label standards.  From start to finish, the album undulates with unparalleled emotive force, its sobering lyrical themes delivered with a depth and clarity that would awaken excitement in the most apathetic among us.  Anthemic progressions underpin a seemingly endless array of memorable melodic voyages, delighting the imagination, and weaving a brilliant cinematic listening experience.  From the blistering in-your-face guitars of Jebel Moon and Splitzkrein, to the explosive percussive onslaught of Your Kettle and We Kuffar, to the haunting mantra of the sarangi in Six Degrees, Blood Red Tape is an epic exploratory journey that will please the ears and challenge the mind.  Add, for good measure, the instant southern-rock classic Back in the Day and the modern-rock hit The Simple Things, and one is left with a truly enthralling eclectic opus.

This album is the latest effort from a project that has been building in both scope and success for several years, the key to which seems to be a healthy combination of do-it-yourself and never-say-die attitudes.  Portal’s members have honed their skills through the lessons of previous efforts, now boasting a collective résumé of a recording engineer, mix engineer, web developer, photographer, video editor, and legal consultant.  Self-production can be a career killer for many independent musicians, but Blood Red Tape unequivocally proves that Portal is not among them.  “We knew from the time the album’s concept was conceived that we wanted to achieve a certain level of quality and professionalism,” says front man and creative force, Kenton Thomas.  “From melodies to lyrical hooks, guitar tones to snare drums, and branding to artwork, the goal on this album was to evaluate our product organically at each stage of the process and ask ourselves, could this have been done better?”  Under the watchful eye of L.A. mainstay and Edmonton native Bill Kennedy (Nine Inch Nails, Ministry), the band found that more often than not the answer was an unapologetic ‘no’.  One listen through Blood Red Tape is enough to understand why.

But success is not new for Portal.  Their 2001 debut, A Taste of Things to Come…, netted the band a nod in the National Songwriting Competition, and a hometown ‘band wars’ win of more than ten thousand dollars in prizes.  The Paradigm from 2005’s Element was nominated for a Just Plain Folks award, Alone and Remnants topped separate commercial music charts in Poland, and Insurgent Few - a live track recorded in the famous West Edmonton Mall - has held solid at the top of Garageband’s progressive rock charts for almost two years.  If that wasn’t enough, on the strength of their success on Warsaw’s ActiveRock chart in 2005, Portal was selected as Independent Band of the Year.

So, what does a band with a brilliant recording, a burgeoning fan base, and an intense desire to succeed do now?  “Take things one step at a time,” says bassist and recording engineer Kevin Hoskin.  “We’re developing a new multi-language website for our fans around the world, and launching a Canada-wide radio campaign and some grass-roots promotional initiatives.  Once we’ve made back some money we’ll start looking towards some indie labels and touring possibilities.”  A modest outlook, perhaps, for a band whose latest effort is already climbing indie charts in Europe and North America, has sold hundreds of pre-sales, and was even licensed for a video game on the Wii console, a full two months before its release.

Slow and steady – a novel idea in an industry dominated by quick money, quick fixes, and increasingly little staying power.  With such a practical outlook in mind, such a brilliant album in hand, and history on their side, Blood Red Tape is sure to give Portal the success they seek.