Review: Scorched Earth By Harakiri for the Sky is as Bleak and Miserable as it is Beautiful

As we settle once more into the coldest, darkest, all-around crappiest time of the year (unless you live in, like, Australia or the Caribbean or something, must be nice), it seems only appropriate to immerse oneself in an album that reflects the sad, gray environs in which we find ourselves. The leaves are all gone from the trees, a constant biting chill fills the air, the mirth and merriment of the holiday season are behind us, and all that lies ahead is a pale overcast expanse which seems to go on forever. God, I’m actually starting to depress myself.

I’m a summer and autumn kind of guy, personally, but there is an undeniably powerful aesthetic to the wintertime as well; it’s desolate and empty, but also uniquely elegant and frightfully alluring. A towering snowcapped mountain peak is as majestic as it is barren and hostile, and Scorched Earth, the brand new full-length album from the Austrian post-black metal duo Harakiri for the Sky, perfectly embodies that sense of duality with its grandiose melodies and heart-wrenching themes of loss and utter hopelessness.

Melancholy has been a defining aspect of this band since their inception, so it should come as no surprise that Scorched Earth is positively laden with it. Doom and gloom are the name of the game, with existential despair blanketing everything like a dense fog and dripping from each and every note like tar. Ordinarily, this sort of shameless heavy-handedness would be a bit of a turn-off for me, but this time around I actually found it to be quite endearing, and there are two reasons for this.

First of all, the music itself is beautifully written and executed, creating a very smooth, natural, satisfying flow from beginning to end. The way that everything slowly builds off of itself and seamlessly transitions into the next segment without ever feeling forced or rushed in any way is a testament to instrumentalist M.S.’s keen ear for subtlety and balance, most notably in songs like “Without You I’m Just a Sad Song” or my personal favorite “No Graves But the Sea”. All of the songs use their momentum wisely and rarely feel as long as they actually are, which is impressive considering that a couple of them clock in at more than ten minutes, but these two are particularly good examples.

The former opens with a sad, tinkling little number on the keyboard that makes me think of a child’s music box with a tiny plastic ballerina spinning in place in front of a bedroom window with snow falling thickly outside, before then launching into a long, winding cavalcade of haunting chords and morose melodies driven along by the steady pounding drums and vocalist J.J.’s throat-rending howls. Eventually the music comes full circle and ends on the same quiet, pensive little tune that it started with, creating a self-contained, never-ending loop, which, knowing these guys, is almost certainly a metaphor or commentary on something.

On the other hand, the latter is noticeably more upbeat and consistently fast paced, easily the most moshable song on the entire album. Both tracks are notably different from each other, but the common thread between them is how they always take great care to never let any particular riff or melody overstay its welcome, stretching it out for as long as possible but never to the point where it feels cumbersome or repetitive. The end result is a clear-cut and well defined sense of identity; these guys know exactly who they are, what they’re about, and what they’re trying to achieve, and what’s more, they have the chops and the experience to pull it off. Needless to say, all of that makes a world of difference in regards to the finished product.

The second reason why this album impressed me in spite of its inherent air of “boo-hoo, woe is me, life is an absurdist tragedy and I’m the doomed, disillusioned protagonist” is, in a word, authenticity. I might not relate to it personally, but I believe them, and I found myself wanting to hear what they had to say next. The prose in J.J.’s lyrics is both thoughtful and incredibly heartfelt, with lines like “Perhaps it was too little too late, we were already too broken, too hurt, but I want to thank you for a thousand kisses that I can still feel on my face” carrying a dreadfully poignant weight. It’s not self-serving or attention-seeking, but rather it feels like a lived experience. It feels real. I mean, who among us hasn’t felt the bitter sting of unrequited love or watched a relationship slowly fall apart at some point in our lives? It’s one of the saddest experiences we can have as human beings, enough to drain the color out of the world and make you feel like there’s no point in soldiering on. Scorched Earth brilliantly captures that sense of heartbroken hopelessness, but rather than simply wallowing in it, instead it uses those emotions as a catalyst and channels them into something profound. Maybe that’s why I liked it so much, because it actually does something creative and purposeful with all of that negativity instead of giving up and allowing it to spread and consume. Who would have guessed that pain could be the inspiration for some of the most beautiful works of art? Imagine that.

Harakiri for the Sky have written an exceptional soundtrack for the frigid depths of midwinter, replete with melancholia and existential struggle but driven forward by sheer passion and an inability to sit there and do nothing about it. It’s dark, depressing, and deeply bitter, but it makes the most of what it has just the same, refusing to go gently into that good night and quietly hoping against hope that things will get better someday. Maybe they will, maybe they won’t, who can say? All I know for certain is that this album is an introspective, darkly beautiful journey through a range of complex emotions that most of us would rather avoid in order to protect our sanity. It takes courage to sit with those kinds of feelings and really make something out of them, but these guys have done just that, and the results speak for themselves.

Scorched Earth premieres Friday, January 24 via AOP Records. Pre-order your copy here

Catch Harakiri for the Sky on the “Shining Over North America” tour alongside Swallow the Sun, Ghost Bath, and Snakes of Russia starting next month.

HARAKIRI FOR THE SKY Tour Dates:
Feb 20 – Detroit, MI – Sanctuary
Feb 21 – Toronto, ON – Velvet Underground
Feb 22 – Montreal, QC – Fouf’s
Feb 23 – Boston, MA – Brighton Music Hall
Feb 24 – New York, NY – Gramercy Theater
Feb 25 – Baltimore, MD – Baltimore Soundstage
Feb 26 – Greensboro, NC – Hangar 1819
Feb 27 – Atlanta, GA – The Earl
Feb 28 – Orlando, FL – Conduit
Mar 1 – Pensacola, FL – Handlebar
Mar 2 – Houston, TX – Bronze Peacock @ House of Blues
Mar 3 – Austin, TX – Come And Take It Live
Mar 4 – Albuquerque, NM – Launch Pad
Mar 5 – Phoenix, AZ – Rebel
Mar 6 – San Diego, CA – Brick By Brick
Mar 7 – Los Angeles, CA – Echoplex
Mar 8 – San Francisco, CA – Neck of the Woods
Mar 9 – Portland, OR – Bossanova Ballroom
Mar 10 – Seattle, WA – El Corazon
Mar 12 – Salt Lake City, UT – Metro Music Hall
Mar 13 – Denver, CO – Bluebird Theater
Mar 14 – Omaha, NE – Reverb
Mar 15 – Chicago, IL – Reggies