Red Harvest "Internal Punishment Programs" (Candlelight)
By Eric Chon
Wednesday. Apr 27, 1:26 AM
Clinical bombardment that can get a bit too much.

Industrial metal is interesting. It contains all the brutality and heaviness of more traditional metal but wraps it in something mechanical and otherworldly – perhaps creating an even more disturbing package. We can easily relate to the primal urges and forces often on display in heavy metal music, but when it becomes cold, calculated, and disciplined metal, sometimes the art form can take on an even more sinister tone. It’s no surprise, then, that industrial metal veterans Red Harvest have it down to a science.

Internal Punishment Programs can be summed up in one word: bleak. The feeling that humanity is slowly being replaced – body part by body part – by machines is palpable and the album unfolds like Shinya Tsukamoto’s Tetsuo: The Iron Man. A manic and violent coupling of the digital and the analog. Songs like the frenzied “Anatomy of the Unknown” are followed by the precise “Fall of Fate,” creating jarring transitions and unexpected twists.

But the changes in Internal… come off a bit too clinical. There is rage and anger without passion. The crests and valleys tend to blend together turning the album to static. As a whole, it becomes a monotonous grey, and perhaps that’s what Red Harvest are attempting to accomplish (if so, they have succeeded). Internal… becomes an album whose strength lies in its individual songs. “Teknocrate” would be awesome if thrown into a mix, displaying them at their machine-powered height. But 11 songs in a row turn them all into white noise.
www.redharvest.com
www.candlelightrecords.co.uk

Eric Chon

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