Anal Nunchuks' Almostopster: Harakiri for the Sky - III: Trauma

Edgy vortexer, complains about album runtime constantly, then chooses a 70 minute long.

Harakiri for the Sky occupies a very special place in my heart. It was 2017, I’d just come to Canada and high school life had me unravelling at the seams, and I’d just discovered metal due to one site that cannot be named. I was heavily into melodic death metal and shaking off my metalcore past, and I found myself drawn to the Finnish unhappiness of Insomnium. Black metal, meanwhile, proved a tough nut to crack – I found most of it devoid of memorable melody, emotional connection, and poignant themes. One day upon my usual blog surfing, I found this strange album – “post-black”, the genre read, and the album cover an unassuming two elks butting heads with each other. Under the blog post was a lyric video. Being used to them, I expected stock After Effects flying text over the album cover. https://youtu.be/adtaUUns1YY

I was hooked. The clunky ESL lyrics and grammatical mistakes didn’t phase me – what mattered was the emotional content. Assorted images of human misery flashed before my eyes, and the pounding blasts synchronized with anti-aircraft fire. I had heard tremolo lines over blasts before, but watching the video, it clicked for me that it could mean something, emotionally. The sugary melodies hit the same sweet spot as Insomnium. I downloaded the album immediately and gave it a listen, eagerly reading the lyrics and rewarding myself with misanthropy, however juvenile. The album did not leave my regular rotation for months.

Fig.1 Anal’s taste in music

My first listen of the entire album was magical. Opener “Calling the Rain” set the scene perfectly, not breaking any boundaries and getting by on a solid construction. Coming from a metalcore background, I loved vocalist J.J.’s clearly enunciated screams, and what more can a high schooler ask for than vocal lines like “FUCK! THIS! LIFE!” over acoustics? “Funeral Dreams” impressed me even more in the context of the album, immediately dialing up the speed from the previous track, wiping away even the smallest seed of fatigue from the opener’s colossal 11:28 runtime. Melodic motifs are repeated often and reprised so they stuck in my head. As the album cruised smoothly, I found myself greatly enjoying the guest clean vocals from Davide Straccione (Shores of Null) and “Thanatos”’s slower, more plaintive pace. Late album highlight “Dry the River” had my jaw on the floor with its “end the song with a sampled shotgun blast” ending. I had heard nothing like it, and I replayed it over and over again without ever getting tired of it.

Coming back to this record now, some flaws are a bit more obvious. “This Life as a Dagger” and the first half of “The Traces We Leave” left nary a dent in my memory. While I still adore the melodic clean sections, the big explosive climaxes are interchangeable and indistinct from each other. Closer “Bury Me” is entirely superfluous after “Dry the River”’s excellent ending. And after exposing myself to the darker sides of black metal, noise, and punk, the sadness in this album seems much more juvenile; cute, even. III: Trauma is no longer my go-to album for when the black dog strikes (and strike it does, often); my taste has moved on from when “Insomnium melodies with a screamo vocalist” was the most exciting thing I had heard. Nevertheless, the album still occupies a dear place in my heart, and I can’t help but smile when the blasting gives way to the guitar melodies that hooked me in at the beginning of my journey into metal.

III: Trauma is bloated, cheesy, and a bit pretentious (“The Traces We Leave” couldn’t be more obviously “I READ HEMINGWAY”); but so am I. So are we all.