Style: Djent, progressive metal, pop metal (clean vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Deftones, Sleep Token, VOLA, The Weeknd
Country: Sweden
Release date: 15 May 2026

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It’s funny when you think about it. I just don’t think anyone listening to Destroy Erase Improve back in 1995 would’ve thought to themselves “this skronky new style of downtuned riffing is going to be watered down and become a textural element for a horny, masked band with a weird lore who become the biggest—and most contested—name in progressive metal.” Nevertheless, it’s what happened. The memetic spread of djent through the metal scene speaks to its almost viral influence, but the fact that it’s become a mainstay on the pop side of the genre—think Sleep Token, VOLA, Spiritbox—is a somewhat unexpected development. Perhaps that’s the Tesseract effect in play; the soaring pop vocals of Dan Tompkins against the polyrhythmic weight of riffs becoming shorn of their complex backing. Whatever the case, djent is now a pop-metal fixture. 

Little wonder then that Port Noir have picked up on the trend. Previous releases by the Swedish trio were somewhat sparing with the metal influence, more often sitting in a mathy electro-rock space. The pivot to the thunderous riffs of the djent scene, which underscore the business-as-usual breathy vocals, floaty ambiences, and trip-hoppy verse beats, cause the band to bear a rather striking resemblance to Sleep Token¹. Port Noir are keeping the dark but should they djettison the djent? 

Love Andersson’s delivery veers between a somewhat overwrought breathiness, and moments of genuinely pleasing melody, generally pivoting between Chino Moreno-esque sensual yearning and Jim Grey (Caligula’s Horse) falsetto runs. That should be an effective combination, but on the whole he utilises vocal melodies that simultaneously manage to be dull while all too breathy and oversung. In Andersson’s defence, the production, which was apparently mixed by someone who thought the object was to get all the levels lined up, does him a terrible disservice. On the other hand, The Dark We Keep was mixed by the band, so I guess that isn’t really a defence of Andersson. As a result, he’s on equal footing with every other instrument rather than being front-and-centre, as any vocal-forward pop music should be. While this uniform flatness does at least make the bass audible, it also means that the various textures cannot complement one another and are instead suffocating in an airless mix.

The rinse and repeat formula makes it tough to highlight moments when every song sounds so similar, and so it’s in the mid-sections that the performers flex their muscles in a vain effort to bestow any sort of character upon the songs. Consequently, the prospective listener is forced to rely on instrumental cues to differentiate tracks: the reverberating synth on “Bloodlust”, the closing blast beats on “Redshift”, the Deftones-esque mannerisms and striking chord progression in the mid-section of “Noir”. Port Noir boast that the record draws influences from black metal, death metal and hardcore. The latter two aren’t present at all—forget them—but some tremolo-picked riffs and blast beats do tip their hat to the Nordic style, and the blast beats, in particular, are a pretty successful texture when they appear.

Lyrically, The Dark We Keep is replete with the sort of dime-store angst depressed fifteen year olds in situationships repost on their Tumblrs, hardly worth dwelling on, although I would like to highlight a line in closing paean to quasi-suicidal teen romance “We Shall Die Together” that runs: ‘we’re roaming the plaza, we be like piranhas.’ In an age of bland AI slop, only a human could write such a uniquely dumb line. Now, there’s a tendency for people to say “well, you’re a prog guy, of course you won’t like pop-influenced metal”. But I have two ears and a heart—I like pop when it’s done well, be it Phil Collins, Jessie Ware or Coldplay. I have Sabrina Carpenter songs in my library: I’m basic! Contrary to elitist opinion, pop is a rich musical vein, and if you think it’s merely committee manufactured fodder designed for virality then you’re simply not looking deep enough. But the ad nauseam djent riffing and melancholically horny melodies on The Dark We Keep simply show a failure of imagination.

Much like the dark they seemingly covet, Port Noir’s latest has a soporific effect, formulaic to a fault with a sanitised sound that barely merits remark. The Dark We Keep’s capitulation to the pop-djent fad neuters anything that made Port Noir interesting in the first place, which will probably only reap dividends for the band. If it doesn’t, they can always don masks.

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Recommended tracks: Noir
You may also like: Royal Sorrow, Cold Night For Alligators, Maraton
Final verdict: 4/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram

Label: InsideOutMusic

Port Noir is:
– Love Andersson (vocals, bass guitar, guitar, keyboards, piano)
– Andreas Wiberg (drums)
– Andreas Hollstrand (guitar, backing vocals, keyboards, piano)

1. Sleep Token, Slipknot, Angine de Poitrine… The recurring lesson of alternative music is that you can make it big by wearing masks, sometimes with silly costumes. ↩︎