Search - Red Harvest :: Greater Darkness

A nice, heavy, industrial album from Oslo, Norway.

Pseudobyte | Minnesota United States | 07/20/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I picked up A Greater Darkness after having bought Cold Dark Matter (Relapse Records) on a whim. This album is crunchingly metal with less emphasis on the noise and rambling instrumentals that a lot of industrial bands favor. If I could compare Red Harvest to any one band, it would be Godflesh. Where Godflesh lacks song structure and lyrical content though, Red Harvest comes through. Yes, a Norwegian band, but the lyrics are in English (shouldn't be a surprise). By the way, I'm not intending to give Godflesh negative criticism with the above comparison.



The opening track, Antidote, is a great introduction to the album. The guitars are heavy, heavy, heavy and fast, fast, fast and the drum beats are punishing. One of those songs where you kinda can't help strumming your air axe. Hole In Me, the next track, slows it down a little bit but not to the point of halting your experience. There's more noise here, though slight, guitars still driving the song with some nice drumming throughout as well (slower, jammy almost) and the song ends with some great, bomby strumming. Dead Cities picks it back up and this is one of the more amusing tracks on the album. You wouldn't think the title of the song was Dead Cities due to the repeated "ERROR. DOT. COM.", lyric. All the lyrics relate to technological trends and our ever increasing loss of privacy in this song. Growlings about "my cell phone", "my computer", and "No more freedom of thought". It's great commentary (amusing to me). Mouth Of Madness has some of the best guitar shreds on the album; during the latter half of the song it sounds like a chainsaw as the song closes out. Beyond The Limits of Physical Experience, the next track, is basically devoid of guitar on the other hand. This is one of those typical, industrial atmospheric songs that relies on the vocals and drums more than anything else; a break in the action, as it were. The rest of the album has much the same theme: heavy, simple, fast guitar strumming, fast drumming, deep growling (no clean vocals) and each song's tempo rises and falls in this epic, crunchy, dramatic way. As I listen to this album, I can't help but think of The Terminator theme and the flashback sequences from the movie; red-eyed, unrelenting killer machines marching on human skulls, blasting everything that moves. Track 8: War Themes, in particular, has that Terminator flavor (there's even some Matrix samples hidden in here; Agent Smith). Track 9: Distorted Eyes, is a ten minute dive into the abyss that features some of the only high guitar notes on the album. It's a roller coaster ride powered by crashing symbols and kerrangy guitar, up and down, before a sudden break that'd make you think it was the next track but it's a redirection that clears the palate so to speak. The last track is a noisy outro that showcases some sparse drumming (is that cowbell?!) and sound effects before finally fading out.



Compared to other Red Harvest albums, I would say this one is a bit tighter in it's composition and in that sense, I suppose some would say it's more commercial but I'm not making that judgement myself. The only real risk you run with this album is a lack of variety in the songs but again, I don't see it as a negative since there are so few bands that can bring off such a satisfying, heavy metal industrial sound so consistantly. I don't know about you, but sometimes I get sick of the more "artsy" industrial stuff (noise) and I'd rather just enjoy some simplistic, heavy yet atmospheric music. A Greater Darkness definitely delivers in that regard."