Reviews list for Red Harvest - Sick Transit Gloria Mundi (2002)

For sure one of the most interesting Industrial Metal acts that has been around since very near the beginning of the genre. Red Harvest have undergone a lot of evolution throughout their career, but along the way settled on an extreme style of Industrial Metal with generous Post-Metal influences and a dual focus on atmosphere and aggression.

Sick Transit Gloria Mundi open up with some of the best songs of the band’s entire career. “AEP” is an all-out aggressor that showcases the band’s strong ties to both Death and Black Metal, charging ahead with mechanical apocalypse. “Godflesh” is an extremely doomy and atmospheric track that showcase the opposite spectrum of their skills; crafting dense, building atmosphere into an all-encompassing sound that retains their mechanical edge. “Humanoia” is another shot of aggression and energy, slightly more contained than the overwhelming “AEP” but still packed with power, great drumming and mechanical riffs.

Unfortunately, after these opening songs, the album fails to reach such heights again. The rest of the album ranges from great to decent, constantly shifting gears between aggression and atmosphere, but never quite pulling either off as well as they did in the opening tracks.

The album is not quite a concept album, but contains many references to humanity being overtaken by machines, extending to the point humans themselves begin fusing with technology and computers until their humanity may as well be gone. It’s a fun take on the digital apocalypse and remains consistently grim and gloomy throughout.

Without a doubt, this is a quality album through and through, but the opening had me thinking this was about to be one of the best Industrial Metal albums I’ve ever heard. It’s great, but if they’d maintained such quality throughout, it’d be a masterpiece. At least it displays the band’s potential.

This is the shit. Bleak and moody Industrial Metal for the Post-Apocalypse. Not much is danceable here (except maybe the first song “AEP”), this is more the sort of thing you listen to on headphones with your eyes closed than while driving. From what I understand, Red Harvest started as more of a generic thrash band (I listened to a little of their first LP and wasn’t impressed) but they evolved into something unique at this point. I definitely hear some Godflesh and even some Voivod in the guitar, and the overall vibe remains me a little of Neurosis. I don’t think those examples really give Red Harvest justice though. It’s NOT droney, or even sludgey. But a lot of it is slower and very melancholy. The setup is vocals, guitar, bass and (real) drums, with the synths playing a slightly more subordinate role, but coming to the forefront from time to time. The synth actually takes over completely on “Desolation,” and it’s awesome. The performance is great across the board, but I think I’m most impressed with bassist Thomas Brandt. I’ve been listening to this fairly regularly for the past few weeks and I’m still noticing things he plays that I hadn’t noticed before. They do a cover of “Dead Men Don’t Rape” by straight-up Industrial act G.G.F.H., which took a few spins to grow on me (despite the weirdness of the original, I think it’s the most straightforward track), but I think it would have made for a great single, if such things mattered in this arena. The reason “Sick Transit Gloria Mundi” gets a 5/5 is because I really can’t really find any flaws or weak points, and hell, I just like it. Why hasn’t this ever been released on vinyl?