Harvester: The Blind Summit Recordings

Agile Irish crew tap into fuzz-rock’s heyday

By Holly Wright
( Metal Hammer )
published

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With not a salad cart in sight, Harvester, from Galway, are ploughing the fields of proggy stoner to full effect with an album that imbibes the fuzzed-up melodies of Dozer and Baroness with a hint of Opeth.

There are soundalikes aplenty here, from the tumble of High On Fire to the gutsy instrumental plod of Karma To Burn (as in the doomy Aberration), making for a well-versed release that keeps you on your toes. The Thin Lizzy-esque guitars in Old Blood add various shades to the tried and tested psych/stoner repertoire, while the laboured lyrics of Atom Splitter fire up cinders left by the overwrought instrumental passages, the likes of which appear in the unfurling closer All Roads Led Away.

While the foot-tapping fuzz-amp groove is hardly reinventing the wheel, Gavin Grealy’s earthy vocals and the perpetual stomp of well-crafted, verging-on-progressive, 70s-soaked tuneage is enough to make Harvester worthy of a few spins. And quite frankly, how can you not love a band that formed through a mutual love of Black Sabbath and Guinness?

Holly Wright
Holly Wright

With over 10 years’ experience writing for Metal Hammer and Prog, Holly has reviewed and interviewed a wealth of progressively-inclined noise mongers from around the world. A fearless voyager to the far sides of metal Holly loves nothing more than to check out London’s gig scene, from power to folk and a lot in between. When she’s not rocking out Holly enjoys being a mum to her daughter Violet and working as a high-flying marketer in the Big Smoke.