RED HARVEST – Internal Punishment Programs

Internal Punishment Programs represents the Harvesters latest (of 8) full-length album … and again the band introduces a quality product. After a short intro, “Fall of Fate” is unleashed, and with its great riffing and incredible pallets of sound, this is one great track. Give mish-mash-master Lrz. a keyboard and a drink or two and you get sorrow, despair, and disturbance in return. Except for the all-time kings of the choir-aah keyboard patch Emperor, there are very few bands who can create atmospheres like these.

“Abstract Morality Junction” and “Symbol of Decay” are also solid songs, and the latter’s Death Metal part (starting at about 2:22) is one of the greatest parts on the album. Groovy indeed. Singer Ofu Kahn uses several vocal styles, and here he growls in a very convincing manner.

As one would expect from the titles, “Mekanizm” and “Teknocrate” represent electronic Metal mish-mash that seems to suffer from lack of musical integrity. Let’s just say you’ll likely want to skip these tracks most of the time. Including such elements in Metal can be cool, and when integrated as a part of a larger context it works very well, but it’s difficult to cope with purely electronic tracks. (It’s not you, it’s me… I know, I know…)

“Synthesize My DNA,” albeit having a not-very-good title, continues on with the momentum from the first (real) songs, with cool twin-guitar riffing, Death Metal style growling, and chord changes, which again remind of Norwegian Black Metal legends Emperor. “Worms,” too, has some of these elements, but this time around in a more modern setting, which actually works very well. The electronic elements are used in moderation to expand the soundscape, and this works just fine. Not all the ideas presented in these songs are Nobel Prize material, but overall it sounds pretty good.

“4-4-1-8” (by the way, what the sexual-act-between-a-woman-and-a-man-deeply-in-love-with-each other {uh, I can’t write “What The F*#K,” as Metal Express Radio actually has quite a few underage visitors} is the point with numbers serving as song-titles?!?) has a more Nu-Metal sound to it, and is a bit on the anonymous side. Unfortunately, the same goes also for the title track. There’s some very good ideas here, but the band tends to delve a bit too long into each riff.

The production for this recording is excellent, mixed as it is at Studio Fredman, with Fredrik Nordstrom behind, upon, under, and inside the mixing table (depends on what time of the day it is). The band performs well too, and although the first half of the album is definitely stronger than the second, and there seems to be too many electronic ditties, this is still a good and recommendable album by one of Norway’s most underrated bands.