Every now and then there are records that come out and fully take you by surprise. Not to say that Portrayal of Guilt was not already on the radar thanks to their catalog of awesome releases over the years, but their new album, …Beginning of the End , really clicked in a way that only happens in truly special cases. It’s one of those records that I put on at least once a week now. To figure out why I can’t stop listening to it but really to learn more about the band’s album creation process and love of anime, I spoke with drummer James Beveridge. What was the writing and recording process for your new album …Beginning of the End ? James Beveridge : The writing process was all over the place for this one actually. I live in New York currently so in-person writing sessions were limited mostly to the handful of rehearsals we would have in Austin before tours. Historically, it’s Matt coming to practice with a riff/rough song structure or coming up with a riff on the spot and we just take it from there, so of course there’s some written that way. But then we have some stuff that was written remotely by sending ideas back and forth. “Human Terror” I know started out that way. One of them Matt wrote entirely as a non-Portrayal of Guilt song that ended up fitting perfectly.