From my understanding, a lot of Portent’s narrative and emotional affect comes from your own personal tragedies. Given that False has pulled back the veil recently, is it difficult for you all to present these personal stories or do you find some relief in this whole process now?
Jimmy: It’s a mixture of both. The writing during the record itself was very cathartic in dealing with trauma and grief. Doing the interviews about Portent, it gets difficult to talk about this stuff because it is really personal. There are times when it is easy and times when it is hard. That may just be grief in general. You learn to better cope with it.
Kishel: There is a lot of solidarity and persistence that comes out in the music—a lot of getting through those harder parts that have happened. I think that can make it a bittersweet experience of performing the music.
Jimmy: Definitely. Navigating the music itself and being together is a good release, but also it is walking a fine line between being miserable and using misery to create your art. In extreme music, there is this focus on suffering, and it can be hard. If you’re suffering and miserable the whole time, you could burn out quick.
That’s what I appreciate about Portent and what drew me to it. There is a resilience to it, it’s not a despondent piece of art. There’s resilience in coming together to grieve and become stronger together.
Portent is dedicated to the memories of Berta Claypool among others. What can you tell me about her and the impact they have on your life or even Portent itself?
Jimmy: Berta was my grandmother. My brother’s and my life revolve around music and we definitely got that from our grandmother. She played piano, cello, she sang. She was always super supportive of what we were doing, and she passed while we were writing this record.
I recently lost my grandmother as well. She had been dealing with progressing dementia and to see it slowly take her away and then ultimately – along with a number of health things – she passed. There was this weird sense of finality.
Jimmy: Yeah. I lost my father as well after we had recorded. You have a better understanding of mortality and negotiating relationships with people even if they were nuanced and strained in the past. Having Travis and Skorpian to talk to about it because we lost family members in close proximity—having someone understand—because losing a parent is really fucking difficult.
To have someone there with you that you can share those feelings, especially someone as close as your bandmates who are there as friends but they are also there to empathize as well.
Jimmy: Definitely. Niko, Rachel, and Kishel as well. We’re all there for each other through everything. That falls back on what we talked about earlier, that closeness with the band. We’ve all been emotionally supportive of each other through it all.