Black Metal is a very special vehicle of artistic expression. One might take it as “simply music”, which I respect, but for some of us, it is more than just music, it is an expression, an extension of the listener, emotionally speaking. I respect that not everyone has the same approach to the genre as I do; however, I do feel the genre is usually seen as gimmicky and over-theatrical…
That being said, allow us to step into the beautifully dark world of Harvest Grief, a fairly new entity to emerge from the ever-growing Catalonian Black Metal scene. Hatvast and Crucifier team up to summon sounds from the depths of Hell, for our own selfish and indulging pleasure, and what a sound it is. In all honesty, the rawer facet of Black Metal sounds, in recent years, as plain and uninspired copies of copies of copies of what was done years ago, and I ended tired of it, moving on to different emotional levels.
Nonetheless, I discover artists that are able to remind me why I love the genre so much, and Harvest Grief is the more recent example, and I find it to be simply amazing. Mid-paced and dark, cold and bleak, mostly inspired by the Blazebirth Hall legacy, which is good and bad, the Catalonian duo gifted us this amazing piece of music, and it stands as a testament of the quality that some musicians are able to imprint into a genre that has suffered so much with never-ending copies. The pace is what I treasure the most. The cadence is a must, and the overall sound is superb.
I dare say the sound replicates the Catalonian cold, right? The cutting riffs, the vocals, everything about this release was, I risk say, immensely well-planned, and the end result is mandatory! It sort of creates this claustrophobic feeling, an overwhelming wall of sound that embraces you, that overpowers you, that dominates. It is just music, or is it? One of the best Black Metal releases I have heard in a long, long, time.
