{"id":200343,"date":"2025-10-14T21:46:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-14T21:46:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/200343\/"},"modified":"2025-10-14T21:46:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-14T21:46:07","slug":"harvest-for-the-souls-we-have-lost-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/200343\/","title":{"rendered":"Harvest \u2014 For the Souls We Have Lost Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

Written By: NamelessN00b_606<\/p>\n

\"\"Since nostalgia drives the creation and consumption of so much contemporary metal, metalheads might be interested in its etymology. A borrowing from post-classical Latin that combines the ancient Greek \u03bd\u1f79\u03c3\u03c4\u03bf\u03c2 (\u2018return home\u2019) and \u2011\u03b1\u03bb\u03b3\u1f77\u03b1 (\u2018pain\u2019), \u2018nostalgia\u2019 meant something like a pathologized homesickness when it came into English usage in the eighteenth century. So if you\u2019re nostalgic for, say, the gothic doom metal of the 1990s, then 90s gothic doom is your musical home, your longing for this home rises to the level of a physical ailment, and Harvest may have the cure. A new Italian quintet, Harvest describes itself as an earnest tribute to bands like My Dying Bride<\/a>, Paradise Lost<\/a>, and Katatonia<\/a>. As with any album overtly tapping into the past, the hope is that For the Souls We Have Lost, Harvest\u2019s debut, administers a \u2018stalg salve with its own unique fragrance.<\/p>\n

For the Souls We Have Lost succeeds at sounding like its inspirations. At the core of Harvest are barebones, Sabbath<\/a>ian riffs, reminiscent of the way My Dying Bride practices Sabbath revival on an album like The Angel and the Dark River. Vocally, Emanuele resembles Aaron Stainthorpe in both his clean and extreme registers. Emanuele and guitarist Fabio Torresan offer simple yet effective interplays between gothy croons, Iommian phrases, and macabre growls, especially on \u201cFloating Leaves.\u201d But no doom with gothic aspirations can do without gloomy atmosphere. In addition to supplying a second guitar, Matteo Gandolfi plays keyboards, adding texture via synthetic strings (\u201cFloating Leaves\u201d), choirs (\u201cBorn Alone\u201d), and horns (\u201cShining Moon\u201d). These elements nicely fill out the refreshingly open production of For the Souls We Have Lost, especially on closer \u201cThe Path of Life.\u201d Harvest have crafted a debut that will transport listeners to a graveyard poetry reading in 1997, with Paradise Lost\u2019s Gothic and Katatonia\u2019s Brave Murder Day providing the soundtrack.<\/p>\n

For the souls we have lost by Harvest<\/a><\/p>\n

Doom is an inherently direct subgenre, but simplicity often holds For the Souls We Have Lost back. The main riffs in both \u201cHunter of Souls\u201d and \u201cShining Moon\u201d are a bit too straightforward; they would have benefited from some variation. On the songwriting front, most of these songs include a clean or acoustic guitar break in the middle (\u201cFloating Leaves,\u201d \u201cHunter of Souls,\u201d \u201cShining Moon\u201d). This is a common way to approach a bridge in doom, but it becomes a predictable pattern here. These sections also raise another issue: the dryness of the non-distorted guitar tones. Opener \u201cBorn Alone,\u201d for example, begins with a two-chord progression played by a clean guitar lacking character. The song eventually kicks into heavy gear, but when it returns to its dry-clean progression in the middle, the song ends up feeling like a buildup without a payoff.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The vocals do occasionally elevate these songs, though they present their own challenges. On the clean side, Emanuele favors a mid-range croon that results in some memorable hooks (\u201cFloating Leaves,\u201d \u201cHunter of Souls\u201d). At other points, however, the cleans don\u2019t hit the ear in the best way. The verse to \u201cIn Shape of Beast\u201d includes melodic jumps that are kind of catchy but that don\u2019t mesh with the supporting music. Similarly, \u201cShining Moon\u201d ends with a cappella vocals that waver when they should be commanding attention. On one song, the cleans sound like the work of a different vocalist. \u201cBorn Alone\u201d drops a droning monotone atop its simple chord progression, which doesn\u2019t do much to develop the melody. Whereas the rest of the album has those satisfying, Stainthropean swings in inflection, \u201cBorn Alone\u201d sets a flat\u2014and retrospectively confusing\u2014tone as the opener.<\/p>\n

If 90s gothic doom is your home, then you probably won\u2019t need to consult your doctor before taking For the Souls We Have Lost. Such listeners will find comfort across the album\u2019s reasonable 37-minute runtime, particularly from \u201cFloating Leaves\u201d and \u201cThe Path of Life.\u201d If, however, the subgenre is more like the Victorian house of an esoteric neighbor, then For the Souls We Have Lost probably won\u2019t do much for you. The retro production won\u2019t read as charmingly nostalgic, and the inconsistencies will prevent full immersion. Harvest have done a good job conjuring the matter and spirit of their influences; hopefully, their follow-up will play off their strengths to develop a unique identity.<\/p>\n

Rating: 2.0\/5.0
DR: 11 | Format Reviewed: V0 mp3
Label: Octopus Rising Records (sub-label of Argonauta Records)<\/a>
Websites: harvest-doom.bandcamp.com<\/a> | facebook.com\/harvestdoom<\/a>
Releases Worldwide: September 26th, 2025<\/p>\n

\n\tGive in to Your Anger:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Written By: NamelessN00b_606 Since nostalgia drives the creation and consumption of so much contemporary metal, metalheads might be…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":200344,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[81406,2325,2775,86976,6448,96,86977,74361,86978,28180,128,86979,86980,28181,263,129,55182,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-200343","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-2-0","tag-2325","tag-black-sabbath","tag-death-doom","tag-doom-metal","tag-entertainment","tag-for-the-souls-we-have-lost","tag-harvest","tag-italian-metal","tag-katatonia","tag-music","tag-my-dying-bride","tag-octopus-rising-records-argonauta-records","tag-paradise-lost","tag-review","tag-reviews","tag-sep25","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200343","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=200343"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200343\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/200344"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=200343"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=200343"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=200343"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}