CANCELED: Free Week w/ Portrayal of Guilt, Fuck Money, Dirt Pile, Hell House

Screamo bands don’t exactly “cross over,” especially those with unprintably sacrilegious album titles, but Portrayal of Guilt exited 2021 looking something like scene ambassadors. Thank January’s spectral, tormented We Are Always Alone – an uncommonly precise emotional apocalypse and accessible enough to earn placement upon several otherwise normcore critic’s lists. Still, don’t count on the band to follow Turnstile onto Seth Meyers. The sludgened tempos and fully blackened vocals of last month’s snarling Christfucker suggest a standoffish refusal of genre that should lead to far more exciting places. Their materiziation at Swass Night comes in company of brand-new bands: intense experimentalists Fuck Money (BLXPLTN/Future Death) and sensory doomgaze trio Dirt Pile each have one track out, while “heavy alt” project Hell Hole has yet to lay tape. —2859246