Portrayal of Guilt, Street Sects, The Infinity Ring, Commitment
Johnny Brenda’s
1201 Frankford Ave.
Philadelphia
June 3, 2026
I was excited for this one. Portrayal of Guilt have been buds of mine since we toured together a year or two ago (time kinda melts a lot of these experiences into each other) and their insane output has only continued since then. Their newest album …Beginning of the End dropped back in April, showing the band going into a new territory that at times feels like something you’d hear from a Psychopathic Records artist, not a blackened hardcore band.
Psychopathic Records - Wikipedia
After my band played, the tour package began with The Infinity Ring. The entire tour consisted of super dark, austere music with The Infinity Ring playing something akin to post-rock, but less like Explosions in the Sky or Envy and more like the kind of eerie soundscapes you hear produced for horror movies. I don’t really have much more of a frame of reference than that, as the few modern composers I know sound nothing like this. The six piece band couldn’t even fit in their entirety on the tiny Johnny Brenda’s stage, with their guitarist and auxiliary percussionist (whose station also had some instruments I’ve seen used for movie scoring but do not know the names of) playing on the floor.
Street Sects were next with a decidedly much harsher and more rhythmic sound. The Flenser-backed duo were joined onstage by Portrayal of Guilt’s own Matt King with a sound that, for me, landed somewhere in the intersection between Nine Inch Nails, Death Grips, and power electronics groups like Whitehouse and Wolf Eyes. They had a sort of ravey feel in some of their songs, and though it was very much some atonal, non-melodic shit, you definitely could still shake a little ass to it. As I watched, I thought about how there really aren’t too many steps from this type of stuff to the kinds of live performances Playboi Carti has been giving lately. I feel like a lot of rage rappers or fans of that type of stuff or harsher sounding digicore might find themselves fucking with this. My friend Kiki called them “blood rave music,” which I think is more apt than anything I’ve said here.
Portrayal of Guilt delivered their usual excellence, making it clear that the sold out crowd was theirs from note 1. In the near decade that they’ve been working, their dedication to making heavy, dark-ass, screamo- and black metal-influenced hardcore has earned them an extremely dedicated following nationwide. Their music is simultaneously scary and sexy. The trio — Matt, Alex and James — have become an incredibly tight unit. Portrayal performed for 45 minutes, often playing songs one into another, making the entire set feel like a single composition. Considering that Portrayal of Guilt’s last release, Devil Music, was five songs with a side B that featured the same songs reimagined with a classical string and horn arrangement, I would guess that Matt King is getting really into composing outside of the rock world. It would also inform The Infinity Ring’s presence on the tour as well. You should peep those tracks, I’ll link them below. Shit sounds like it was written in Mordor.
