HARVEST OF SOULS

Harvest of Souls ‘Who’ (Self Released). And with a name like Harvest of Souls I think it’s fairly safe to assume that this lot don’t write ‘strolling into the sun holding hands’ kind of songs not unless of course the sun in question is at the point of imploding into a red giant and the hand holding couple are the soon to be dead victors walking amid a landscape of destruction following a Revelations type conquest. Harvest of Souls are pretty much your archetypical hard rock outfit done with a gruel and groove make-over, never failing to waver or for that matter flinch, HoS don’t so much bludgeon you with out and out violent sonics but rather pensively insinuate and pull you apart from the inside. In Brian Sutor the trio have a vocalist who powerfully veers between Plant, Coverdale, Scott and Cornell and who is more than ably equipped to ride out the punishing slavish like emotional tides that the band undertake to grind out. Dipping cleverly to unify varying strands of rock’s ever evolving personality, HoS blend visceral elements of grind core / grunge and lighten the heaving equation with the merest of melodic dabs that are then themselves gathered together a fitted out with rumbling doom laden storm like atmospherics, the resulting sounds offer visions of bleak wastelands battered into submission by the cruellest of nature’s seizures, from the harrowing introspective open sores found stinging on ‘Who’ the bands collective surge literally pins you to the wall with its serrated claustrophobic hooks. ‘Love me hate me’ my personal favourite, gently unfurls hinting at a brooding epic in the making, classically etched with Whitesnake pretensions and gifted with some superbly scored harmonies. ‘Born to Heaven born to
Hell’ can only be described as a funky Slayer playing Russian roulette with a grooving AC/DC with Jon Spencer loading the barrels, quite neat if you ask me.