Harakiri For The Sky

Between dazzling lights and sinister darkness, a quiet Thursday night in the heart of Rome's east side turns into a collective ritual, sweeping the Roman audience up in a fierce, cathartic tide. Officiating the shamanic liturgy are Vienna's Harakiri For The Sky, now in their fifteenth year of career, celebrated with the release of their latest album "Scorched Earth" on their trusted label Art Of Propaganda. The evening at Largo Venue on Via Prenestina is opened by local band SVNTH, hastily called in to replace Klimt 1918, sadly forced to drop out due to a member's health issues. The band led by singer and bassist Rodolfo Ciuffo unleashes a sound halfway between black-metal fury and more introspective shoegaze-tinged passages, acting as the perfect bridge into the Austrians' show. Harakiri For The Sky's set opens with new single "Heal Me", which effectively sums up the sound the band has forged over the years. It works through sudden rhythmic jolts, with a raging, hardcore-tinged vocal edge, but above all through luminous openings built on piano lines, as if painting a micro-universe of conflicting feelings in the listener's soul. The following "Fire, Walk With Me" takes off at full speed with a riff evoking the harsh mountains of northern Europe, building like a cathedral of instrumental phrasing and tempo changes into a blackgaze gem. The songs are stretched out in the live format, wrapping the audience in a lyricism that unfolds between progression and more delicate breaks, as in "With Autumn I'll Surrender", which leaves behind a haze of despair and dejection. Tracks like "You Are The Scars" then bring all the inner pain to the surface, like a psychoanalysis session set to guitars as sharp and abrasive as blades. But this form of depressive music is designed to suddenly dazzle with thunderous bursts of light, as on the main riff of "Without You I'm Just a Sad Song", which brings certain Radiohead-esque textures right to the centre of the darkest part of the stage. Icy black-metal merges with metalcore towards the end of the set, on the searing "Sing For The Damage We've Done", before an encore practically demanded by the crowd. Harakiri For The Sky return to the Roman stage with the piano intro of "Keep Me Longing", torn open by a dramatic surge. The grand finale comes with "Lungs Filled With Water", a final blend of black-metal and shoegaze, moving forward with a hypnotic, glacial pace. After more than an hour of desperate beauty, the Vienna-based band bid the audience farewell, while more than one face seems marked by emotions too heavy to wash down with a pale ale.

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