While 2018’s Arson was, to my ears, a true fork in the road for HARAKIRI FOR THE SKY – an album where the band could’ve taken any number of divergent paths, all worthwhile – Mære felt very much as if the duo had decided to make camp in the lands of Arson, either unwilling, or undecided as to how to move forward. Factor in the re-recordings of 2010 debut and sophomore Aokigahara released in 2022, and it leaves one to wonder how the time since Mære was spent. Scorched Earth arrives, and now we know, for better or worse.

Plaintive, pleading from its birth, ‘Heal Me’ arrives, the lyric “I wasn’t myself for months and nobody noticed.” ripping the scab off and exposing the open wound, as HFTS can do when at their best, elements of post-hardcore and keys winding themselves around the vocals of a guesting Tim Yatras [AUSTERE] instrumentalist M.S. using rhythm and drums to create near-corporeal characters in the tune in a way we haven’t heard before. The duo has always striven for a sense of the expansive in its music, and ‘Keep Me Longing’ is no exception, at nearly 11 minutes the longest song in an album of long songs. Thankfully, there’s no sense of aimless wandering in the sonic hinterlands, a blight that has ever lain its scourge over whatever “post-black metal” is supposed to be, and (to be fair) post-rock in general.

It’s ‘Without You I’m Just A Sad Song’ that thrives in grandeur, easily a high-water mark in HFTS’s recorded output thus far and, quite frankly, of this style over the past half-decade. Classical-influenced passages that would make IHSAHN proud, impassioned vocals of J.J. born of a heart’s pain, a sea of sonic beauty pouring into your ears. From the serene to the storm, it’s found in this song. Beginning with an unexpected but welcome electronic pulse, ‘With Autumn I’ll Surrender’ finds M.S. employing such to underpin the tune and can’t help recalling the work of THEATRE OF TRAGEDY’s techno-trash albums. The difference here is that HFTS manages to keep the human element intact and, therefore, succeeds.

Proper closer ‘Too Late For Goodbyes’ works ideally as the end here, and is truly the album’s namesake in sound, raging, cataclysmic and unbridled, even with the fey vocal contributions of Serena Cherry [SVALBARD] rising from the maelstrom now and again, eyes of a storm, to be sure.

HARAKIRI FOR THE SKY, you have more than proven yourself to me. Despite its somber subject matter, Scorched Earth is the very definition of triumph. Oh, and there’s a RADIOHEAD cover, so there’s that too.
Review By: Lord Randall

HARAKIRI FOR THE SKY
Scorched Earth
AOP Records