Full Album Review: Harakiri for the Sky

Harakiri for the Sky

Arson (2018, Austria)

Melodic Post-Black Metal, Depressive Suicidal Black Metal, Post-Hardcore

Harakiri for the Sky is an Austrian black metal band formed in 2011 who combine traditional black metal speed and dark tone with post-rock's atmospheric, semi-experimental tendencies, and post-hardcore's aggression, dynamics, and melody. Comprised of vocalsit Michael "J.J." V. Wahntraum, and multi-instrumentalist Matthias Sollak, the pair has already made a name for themselves in the extreme metal world despite their relatively short career, including fairly heavy touring with a regular lineup.

Arson is the pair's fourth effort, and with just over a seventy minute runtime across eight tracks, it's a lot of music to get through, so I'll truncate my rambling here and get on with things.

The album opens with what one might call a banger in Fire, Walk With Me. After opening with quiet reverb-drenched, tremolo picking guitars under piano, it quickly goes full bore into layers of distorted guitar and bass with the piano adding extra depth amidst the pummeling kick drums and J.J.'s shout-screamed vocals.

This track is a perfect example of the band's overall sound, with the firestorm interrupted for a somewhat lower-energy section about four minutes in where the vocals are replaced by an absolutely beautiful lead guitar melody before the volume and speed come back for a bit, before continuing on.The last three minutes of this nine minute long piece, in particular, are incredibly emotional, with heavy, rhythmic hardcore-punkish riffs giving way to that melody and atmosphere that Harakiri is known for.

The Graves We've Dug and You Are The Scars follow the opening track, with the latter in particular being one of my favorite tracks the band has made for its heavy use of piano and somewhat slower tempos to emphasize the track's somber tone and subject matter. The melodic guitar parts and clean chords overlaid in some of the quieter sections are perfect, and showcase the great dynamic range this band uses.

Next is Heroin Waltz, which is the other track with a music video (along with You Are The Scars). It opens with quiet classical guitar and swelling strings that set the mood for the rest of the track and build the motif that much of the track will utilize, as it alternates between fury and calm, with judicious use of wailing, melodic electric guitar leads and clean, acoustic elements.

Tomb Omnia is what I would call a "melancholic-positive" sort of tune, musically speaking. Topically, less so, as it's about a particularly dark and unhappy period of vocalist J.J.'s family, but it still has this underlying feeling of wanting to push on through it all.

The first track from this album that really grabbed my attention upon first skimming through Arson, however, was Stillborn. It has a doom metal feeling with its slow opening section full of swaying power chord riffs, and then drops out into what I can only describe as a black metal bluegrass riff at about two and a half minutes in, which hooked me like none other the first time I heard it, and it only gets better from that point, climbing to a crescendo of pure emotional energy at roughly eight minutes, before reprising its main section again.

Voidgazer and Manifesto are the penultimate and ultimate numbers on Arson respectively, and absolutely a worthy finale to this story. The former is a mid-tempo, more vibe-y song with some really awesome chord progressions and riffs throughout, while the latter is something entirely different for this band, a cover of the Graveyard Lovers song Manifesto, with clean-sung female vocals provided by Silvi Bogojevic in the verses, and J.J.'s signature screams in the choruses. It's easily the most accessible track on the record, vocally, but doesn't sound out of place amongst its much more upbeat and loud predecessors.

Since this is black metal I haven't mentioned the production, but sonically the album is superb, maintaining the volume and size you'd expect from metal while also having well-balanced instrumentation and clarity that makes sure every note of every layer is discernible without taking away from the borderline manic energy of the overall mix. The album's bass is also very audible, which is definitely not the norm for the style, but a welcome sound to my ears, as a bassist and fan of thicker sounding music in general.

Arson is an incredible album and has already become an all-time favorite of mine despite my only recently discovering Harakiri for the Sky's music. (Thanks to a guy I met while playing Runescape for introducing me to them and many other great bands).

It's dark, it's depressive, it's energetic, and it's heavy, while still being atmospheric, beautiful, honest, and in some way uplifting throughout.

Michael Nelson of Stereogum said the following about the album, in particular the aforementioned track Tomb Omnia.

" DSBM artists sing about pure existential pain. Some people feel more comfortable when their metal doesn’t allow for humanity — they want Satan or nothing — but I’m not one of them. For me, when I hear a dude fucking screaming, it hits a whole lot harder when he’s really fucking screaming....

...when I listen to “Tomb Omnia,” I fucking get it. You will, too. For a long time, I didn’t totally understand why a style of music called “depressive suicidal black metal” was also the most inspirational, awe-inspiring, life-affirming shit I’d ever heard. But then one day, it hit me: This stuff isn’t meant to recreate the numbed, gray experience of suicidal depression. It’s what you listen to when you are there — when you are alone, in your headphones, and nothing else can reach you. You’ll feel this."

And that is a perfect summation of all the aspects of the band's sound. The beauty and melody aren't there to represent depression, but as a reminder of the fact that there's something out there beyond the inescapable, emotionless, gray void that depression often becomes.

Arson is, like all of the band's discography, a work of art that in my opinion deserves a piece of your attention, regardless of your musical preference. It's the sound of a band writing genuine music about life, and all the humanity and emotion that it entails.