Red Harvest - A Greater Darkness (Season of Mist - 2007)

In the better late than never department, I STILL can't get over how great the last Red Harvest album was/is. Honestly, the best Neurosis album might have come from Norway in 2007. And with all due respect to Neurosis, a band I adore, A Greater Darkness got a lot more play from me than Given To The Rising. And I liked Given To The Rising! And it's not as if Red Harvest are some sort of carbon copy Neur/Isis wannabe. They are better than that. But the comparison is still valid. And it's a compliment, really. The idea of making an album sound like some sort of catastrophic weather pattern - a storm to end all storms - and the almost mythical levels of dramatic tension, are, for both bands, ways to tap into something much much larger than themselves. Which, you could say, is metal's job. Or what most metal strives to achieve. But the best bands go beyond "big" or "loud" or "epic". They create their own oversized mythos. Red Harvest do this handily on A Greater Darkness. It's everything you could ask for from a modern metal album. Such a satisfying and rightous roar. Just in case anyone missed this blast, here's an album that, in retrospect, deserved a better showing on my top 20 list for the year. Sorry, Red Harvest! What can I say? It was a strong year with a ton of strong albums.