Three years down and Harrowed finally return from a self imposed exile. What have the clandestine three piece learned during their time in the wilderness? Has isolation nurtured the seed of compassion for the fate that awaits their fellow man as the western world seems intent on it’s own destruction? Have they have returned with the fire with which to illuminate humanities path back to compassion and reason? Have they fuck.
Harrowed’s second album ‘Chaotic Nonentity’ feels less like a collection of songs and more like a descent through the nine circles. Thirteen reflections upon the structural damage inherent in the human condition.
Opener Stark Terrors is a jarring ram raid of shattered glass riffs and rabid apostate gospel. Vocalist Seb Leslie’s godless bellow is unrelenting throughout. One Hundred Years lyrics read like extracts from a generations suicide note. The poetry of a man truly at the end of his rope. It is the last baring of splintered teeth. The final act of defiance against a world spiraling out of control. Tearing at the hand that nails the coffin lid shut. Despite the crushing nihilism that creeps from every pore of this record, it’s not without texture. There are tiny flickers of light; occasional flourishes of spartan melody claw their way to the surface beneath the sheets of howling guitars and funeral drums. Shards of hope lurking in the depths of Disconnexion’s mournful lament. These moments of acute contrast is best described by Harrowed themselves in Inauthenticide as a “bloom in the dirt of the human race”.
Harrowed have not allowed the scars of Into Inferno to heal. Have not allowed the passage of time to dilute their collective scorn one drop. In tearing out the sutures of those old wounds to expose the nerve damage and create a death knell so raw and belligerent fit to chronicle these apocalyptic times.
