Harm's Way - Posthuman

Ending this year of individual album discussions on a positive note, I’m giving my due respects to Chicago’s own Harm’s Way, a band Jacob Bannon has taken under the wing of his Deathwish Inc. label and given the proper spotlight. The band took their time after 2015′s dual releases to hone their sound and come back only more punishing than before after the break. The time since their previous effort has seen a previously unshed light grace their metallic hardcore style through the meteoric rise of Code Orange last year, a genre with the kind of cool head that (ideally) should operate just as if there wasn’t the pressure of increased visibility upon it, and Harm’s Way bring forth a convincing slab of muscular metalcore to slam onto the offering table of this new era of metallic hardcore. In most ways, Posthuman is Harm’s Way as confident in their own stylings as they’ve ever been, embodying the resolve of the genre exquisitely, but in a few ways, it is also a subtle update that keeps them at the top of the crop of their now even more competitive genre.

While the vicious opening cut, “Human Carrying Capacity”, and its equally violent coda, “Last Man”, kick the album off on an appreciably straightforward note, songs like the foreboding “The Gift” and “Become a Machine” do show an awareness of the zeitgeist of hardcore right now. The song “Dissect Me” features a particularly modern dissonant guitar motif that brings a new dynamic to the band’s sound. I personally enjoy the groovy, beat-down wrap-up of “Dead Space” and the dynamic of the shouts and well-accented highs that put a slightly apocalyptic twist on the hardcore style.

There really isn’t too much that Harm’s Way are doing here that defies expectations or breaks them away from their mold, but a solid outing of metallic hardcore in this day and age, just like Posthuman, is exactly the right thing for them, and I hope this gives them the proper share of hardcore’s larger new spotlight.