Every Friday, The Metal Examiner delves metal’s endless depths to present the genre’s most important and exciting albums.
Harm’s Way: Isolation (Closed Casket Activities, 7/5/11)
Harm’s Way: “New Beginnings”
[audio:http://alarm-magazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/06-New-Beginnings.mp3|titles=Harm’s Way – New Beginnings]Though ostensibly affiliated with the hardcore scene, Harm’s Way has moved into the primitive, mid-paced territory of death-metal bands like Bolt Thrower and Asphyx. Originally formed in 2005 as a power-violence band in the vein of Crossed Out and Infest, Harm’s Way has become slower and more metallic with each of its releases. Isolation, its second full-length recording, is a definitive statement for the band, cementing its vision of the possibilities in heavy music.
Hardcore and metal have fed off of each other for decades. In the early and mid-1980s, Metallica, Celtic Frost, and other pioneering bands cited not only the new wave of British heavy metal as an influence, but also hardcore bands like Discharge. Since then, there has been a two-way street between the metal and hardcore communities, with New York-based hardcore bands like the Cro-Mags and Madball clearly borrowing ideas on heaviness from death-metal bands, and a band like Obituary claiming Merauder as an influence.
