When you feel anger, despair, or just good old desolation, it’s hard to find the right soundtrack. I hear you! There’s a lot of heavy bands out there, but not many can truly capture the feeling of being utterly lost in anguish. Har is here to offer something hideous and immoral. You could almost call it Curse Creation. Before you start salivating in a Pavlovian manner, keep reading to find out if this is what your broken spirit needs to accept its inability to recover and live a functional life. Too dark? And we’re only getting started!
So, I hope you’re ready for unlimited unrest because Curse Creation sounds like an abomination you can’t help but stare at, suppressing the urge to puke while searching for a blunt object to put it out of its misery. Imagine if Adversarial and Concrete Winds had a child—and it was hungry. That’s what Har has crafted here. This album is ugly and dirty! The production is cavernous, with that old-school Death Metal touch, but Har strikes an interesting balance between Black and Death Metal. The lines between these two styles blur so much amidst the chaos that you’re left reeling. Can you believe this is a debut? That’s ridiculous!
Despite being a furious beatdown of hysterical guitar solos, odd time signatures, and insane drumming, Curse Creation is remarkably cohesive. At no point does the album drag too much, and the tracks fit together well. There’s an interlude (“Infernal Passage”) I could do without, but I understand we need to breathe before the black hood is pulled back over our faces. I’m surprised that this thing is such a mess; the songwriting is an up-and-down journey made of riffs that sound like they took basic chromatic guitar and bass warmups and twisted them into something as evil and depraved as possible. It’s an impressive mess that shouldn’t work! Yet it does.
Okay! Anything to get mad about? Well, the album has one mood: eternal and cosmic despair. If you can’t handle that, then you’re not going to enjoy Curse Creation. Then there’s the fact that, despite feeling better paced than Concrete Winds, you’ll need a few listens to find its groove. You might initially see it as pointless and grim bestiality, but please, for once, I ask you to be patient and give Har more than one chance. This album is disgusting, but in a good way (you know you’ve been too long in the trash when pejorative terms become compliments).
If you crave strong flavors (like drinking gasoline straight from an old Chevy), then Har can join the list of bands that make music so unrelenting you can only listen in perplexed awe at how cool it is. You can headbang to this more than usual, so at least it’s groovy mania. That’s enough for me—it won’t change the world, but it will make dealing with the pain it causes you a bit easier. Isn’t that why you listen to Metal? To wash away the pain? Not me! I’m only in it for the fun sounds, hehe…
Label: Dark Descent Records
Release date: 23 August, 2024
Website: https://www.facebook.com/harblackmetal
Country: Israel
Score: an abomination that can’t die! Or 3.5/5.0 for nobody!
Metal Eclipse Reviews 