UMUR "Crimen Laesae Majestatis Divinae" is the 2nd full-length studio album by Swedish heavy metal act Portrait. The album was released through Metal Blade Records in May 2011. Since the release of their 2008 self-titled debut album, Per Karlsson has replaced Phillip Svennefelt as the band´s new lead vocalist.

Phillip Svennefelt was close to being King Diamond incarnate, and as a consequence the band´s debut album was more or less a Mercyful Fate worship album, but Per Karlsson is a less King Diamond worshipping lead vocalist. I say less though, because there are still clear references to Mercyful Fate/King Diamond in both the vocal department and in the instrumental parts of the music. So this is still what I would characterize as a worship album.

The atmosphere reeks occultism and horror and the band play powerful and energetic traditional heavy metal with both raw riffing and melodic leads and themes. Per Karlsson is a skilled vocalist and his vocal style is varied and powerful. The rest of the band are well playing too. The material is generally well composed and overall "Crimen Laesae Majestatis Divinae" is a pretty strong album. That feeling is only further enhanced by the suitingly raw and powerful sound production. If you can live with the clone factor or maybe even look for acts that sound like Mercyful Fate, I can highly recommend a purchase. If you look for something a little more original sounding, look somewhere else. A 3.5 star (70%) rating is deserved.

Time Signature Beast of metal...

Genre: traditional heavy metal

Portrait is another one of those Swedish retro metal bands, and portrait are very good at what they do. It seems to me that, while a lot of retro metal bands go back to the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, Portrait are more inspired by the legends in Mercyful Fate - even to the point that their vocalist Per Karlsson emulates King Diamond's singing techniques, but without being a rip-off. Karlsson is an excellent singer, and he has his own sound.

In addition to the king Diamond influences, Portrait also appear to drawn on 80s power metal and speed metal. There are a couple of neoclassical guitar patterns to be heard, and some tracks are played at early speed metal tempo.

While inheriting stylistic traits from Mercyful Fate, Portrait strike me as being less progressive than Mercyful Fate in the sense that Portrait have not adopted Mercyful Fate's complete disregard for traditional song structures, which means that the verse-chorus configuration appears on this album - not that that's a problem really.

Production-wise, Portrait manage to emulate a mid 80s sound, which is both good and bad. The good thing is that the sound is less polished than what we may be used to nowadays. The bad thing, to me, is that a lot of metal releases back then were drowned in reverb, and that also applies to this release.

Still, I think that this release is very good, and Portrait succeed in bringing back to life the weird and wonderful character of traditional 80s metal.