In 2002, rumours abounded that Portishead’s third record would be called Alien. They were wrong, but not without truth; much of Third sounds like the soundtrack to a genuinely chilling sci-fi horror film. It’s not an accident that the fascistic, ossified and mechanical rhythm of ‘Machine Gun’ finds itself transformed and consumed by crazed Terminator / Blade Runner / Vangelis synthesisers.
The sound throughout is muffled and dark, cinematic still, but differently. ‘The Rip’ swells electronically just over two minutes in and suddenly becomes magnificently repetitive. The oddly falling in-and-out of earshot shuffles that open ‘Plastic’ are perhaps the closest thing here to trip-hop, only the crackling, noir-ish strings one might expect of Portishead are replaced by shuddering, unsettling electronic echoes.
‘We Carry On’ is Third’s highlight, a monolith at its centre that is stomped into submission by a serial-killer drum pulse, and which climaxes in an intensifying storm of gothic guitars, before ‘Deep Water’ offers brief, disquieting acoustic relief. Every speck of dusty spittle on Beth Gibbons’ lips is apparent in ‘Small’, the opening minimal pain, the mid-section and finale run through with weird bass ululations, fucked-up cello, scraping guitar and dissident synth. Huge piano chords, tick-tocking cowbell percussion, and squalling, corrupted brass characterise ‘Magic Doors’ while the doom-laden drum rolls and cancerous, radioactive bleeding edges of ‘Threads’ close the album in a clamour of nuclear alarms.
Third is not a pleasant experience. Even Mezzanine and Maxinquaye, perhaps the only other two records to have come from Bristol’s stable that come close to this in terms of foreboding aura, seem like twinkly children’s albums by comparison. Both ancient and futuristic, a mildewed signal from a more advanced culture that failed to survive the ice age, Third doesn’t make you pay attention to its desolate contours, but rather stare out of the window, creeping panic causing your mind to dart in a million dark directions at once. This is not a nice record. It is music without a time, a place or a context. Inertia, solitude, suffocation. From: https://drownedinsound.com/releases/13067/reviews/3158523-portishead-third
