“Like labelmates Graves at Sea and Lycus, and fellow American’s Bell Witch and Samothrace, Usnea live life in the slow(er) lane. Their brand of doom features a rotating spit of tasty off-shoots: funeral doom, black metal, sludge, and progressive metal all permeate through the five dense and atmospheric tracks of Portals into Futility, the band’s third full-length. A vague and ethereal science-fiction concept runs through the album, too. I’ve deduced this not from the lyrics but from the reading list supplied by the band: the works of Gene Wolfe, Ursula Le Guin, Carl Sagan, Margaret Atwood, Philip K. Dick, and Frank Herbert are expected to be cosmically crumbled into this curious concoction.” Sci-ops.
