This little black metal gem was released a little too subtly by Husk, drafting on the kick of their recent Swamp Horse 7”, and muddled by a curious similarity to ‘Hater of Life’ by Husk’s Josh Lay. Harassor is a Los Angeles three-piece with an LP repress to their fame. They play chunky death metal hooks like Howl to a thrash like Bone Awl. Hardly esoteric Euro shit, this is staunchly an American problem: the 8 songs on ‘Hater of Man’ were recorded about six years ago – surely there’s a story there, not least of which is how Lay wound-up with them – and the verve of their malaise has turned a bit to irony where time gnaws away at the evocative assault in titles like “Killed by Inanity,” “Ripping Hammer,” and “The End of Your World”, or the liner notes proclamation that “Harassor grimly demands the complete extermination of mankind”. Not that the genre abhors a vacuum. This aesthetic is scorched to the sound and abnegating imagery, most comparable to Akitsa (with all the stylistic adjustments that a thicker mother-tongue will bring), as the band cleanses the bright overtones of live recording through a lo-fi dub, plying the blackened depth not in symbolic production ala Burzum et al, but in the distance between this raw performance and its cynical dispersal, like white poison in the L.A. water supply. Heavy cards and labeled tapes.
Husk cassette
$6
HERE