Artist......: Harakiri for the Sky
Album.......: Arson
Year........: 2018
Genre.......: Black Metal
Label.......: AOP Records
Cat.No......:
Source......: WEB (24bit)
Encoder.....: libFLAC
Quality.....: 3032kbps avg. / 96.0kHz / 2 channels
Playtime....: 01:11:34 (1638.1MB)
R.date......: 2023-01-06
S.date......: 2018-02-16
Website.....: http://open.qobuz.com/album/0703774152653
Disc 1 / 1
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01. Fire, Walk with Me 9:08
02. The Graves We've Dug 10:04
03. You Are the Scars 10:36
04. Heroin Waltz 9:47
05. Tomb Omnia 8:09
06. Stillborn 9:37
07. Voidgazer 9:15
08. Manifesto 4:58
I'll admit that this is somewhat outside of my usual wheelhouse. When I
reach for black metal, I tend to prefer it to keep itself far away from the
post rock/shoegaze trappings that have become so ubiquitous in the
atmospheric camps as of late. I have soft spots for Altar of Plagues and
Wolves in the Throne Room but for the most part it just generally bores me
to tears. This is why the Austrian duo, Harakiri for the Sky, is such a
huge surprise to me, because I love the absolute shit out of Arson.
From what little I can gather, most fans of the band find their fourth
album here to be somewhat of a disappointment because very little has
changed throughout their discography, but honestly this just tells me that
I'm missing three other incredible albums by starting this late. On paper,
Harakiri for the Sky plays a fairly by-the-numbers brand of post-black,
consisting mostly of melancholic melodies layered over simplistic mid paced
riffs with distant vocals playing second fiddle to the melodies, but where
I think this band excels is actually through their other fiddles. The band
takes the Anaal Nathrakh route of the two-man-band ideal by having M.S.
handle all of the instrumentation while J.J. just stands there and screams,
but I feel like choosing to take on a session drummer for Arson (the
current drummer of Septicflesh) was probably a huge boon to the overall
feel of the album, because he absolutely fucking murders his performance.
He seems to have an almost Kollias-level addiction to speed in his lower
half, because almost the entirety of the album is comprised of him blasting
his fucking heart out, and even when he slows down it's only through his
upper half, as his feet continue pummeling away at insane speeds. It lends
a frantic dissonance to the experience that I adore, changing what would
otherwise sound like "I'm dying and I'm very sad about it" into "I'm dying
and I don't want to fucking die please help me." Nothing about this sounds
like a triumph, it's all instead a mournful dirge played with incongruent
ferocity, and it's an extremely cool effect. I'll take this speedy and
riff-heavy approach over the weepy bleakness of Alcest any day.
Another thing that absolutely deserves mention is how brutally long every
song is without ever feeling truly drawn out. It never falls into mindless
repetition, with each track being a dynamic journey complemented by
seemingly dozens of riffs and patterns. The most impressive parts of the
band to me are the more peripheral aspects, but the songs all live and die
by the strength of the melodies regardless. There really aren't any moments
where I find myself bored or wishing a certain section would hurry up and
end, instead finding myself enraptured in gorgeous clean and/or soaring
guitar lines over the frantic rhythm section. It's pretty impressive to
have the shortest song still fall north of the eight minute mark and never
fall into a rut. The meaty production helps a lot in this regard, because
even if you do tune out, it remains quite full and never really results in
passive background noise.
There are a few problems here though, and admittedly they're all fairly
large. For one, while the songs themselves are very dynamic and shift
through many different sections with appropriately intense climaxes, they
all tend to shift through the same dynamic. The tempos are almost entirely
dependent on a brisk mid-tempo or a desperate blast, the moods are all
melancholic and depressive, and there are very few truly unique sections
throughout the runtime (like the absolutely crushing quasi-breakdown riff
in the climax of "Fire, Walk with Me" or the hopelessly gorgeous outro of
"You Are the Scars"). There's no fully calm song nor any fully blast heavy
full-metal-assault. It's one mood, that's all you get. I've skimmed a few
reviews of the album online and many of them mention an almost
Korpiklaani-esque folk metal section somewhere in "Stillborn" but that's...
not at all true? I think they're talking about the section at roughly 2:30
but really it's just the same basic thing they do for the rest of the
album, just with a slightly more active guitar line. I guess if you really
squint your ears it sounds a bit like early Ensiferum but that's really
stretching it. What the hell? Did one reviewer throw that reference in as a
joke and everybody parroted it without actually listening?
It's also the opposite of succinct, with every song avoiding the problem of
needless repetition but still following a similar structure throughout
lengthy runtimes. Including the Graveyard Lovers cover from the digital
version (which I'm using to review), it clocks in at an excruciating 71
minutes. With the songs all being so similar, this is one of the few albums
where I would actually say that putting it on shuffle and listening to
roughly three songs before just moving on to something else wouldn't
devalue the experience at all. That's about all it takes to get a full idea
of what the album contains. The first handful of tracks seem to have more
individual standout sections but the last three tracks are probably tighter
and more consistent on the whole, but even then it's a negligible
difference. "Tomb Omnia" and "Voidgazer" aren't really all that different
from "Heroin Waltz" and "You Are the Scars" despite this distinction.
There's really no place to put this, but the vocals are worth noting as a
flaw as well. J.J. isn't a bad vocalist by any means but he's noticeably
the only truly static element of the band. His screams are all a monotone
bellow, with no variation whatsoever between all of his lines. He hardly
even has a "metal" voice, entirely devoid of black metal screeching or
howling. It's just a gruff holler, and it wouldn't sound too out of place
in a particularly moody (post) hardcore band. I don't particularly mind it,
personally, but it's noticeable and worth mentioning.
Now, here's where we peel back the curtain a bit and see how all of this
relates to my own personal philosophy on music and reviewing. To me, music
is art. There are different kinds of experiences and goals that any given
metal band will tackle, but it's art all the same. Taken as a piece of art
as opposed to a clinical deconstruction of the elements at play within
Arson, all of those flaws amount to essentially bupkis. Yeah the songs are
all fairly samey and it's agonizingly long, but... man who gives a shit? I
don't need a fuckin' math problem to tell me how much I enjoy something. If
you plug in the individual components and weigh them however you choose to
weigh them, you're going to encounter a lot of negatives that drag the
score down. If those negatives actually do impact your enjoyment then hey,
more power to you, but for me they just... don't. If I used some sort of
formula to score this album, it'd land somewhere probably as low as the
high fifties or low sixties. But in my heart of hearts, if I just ask
myself "How much do I like this album?", the answer is a very simple "A
shitload."
-Lair of the Bastard