(written by Islander)
When I was a very young lad my mother gave me an illustrated book of Greek myths. One of the tales that especially captivated me was the legend of Jason and the Argoanuts’ quest for the Golden Fleece. Later, I was equally captivated by the classic film Jason and the Argonauts, which featured stop-motion animation visual effects by the great Ray Harryhausen.
I didn’t know then, and only learned recently thanks to the Italian band Harkane, that the principle source material for this legend was an epic Greek poem, The Argonautica, written in the third century BC by Apollonius Rhodius, who served as a scholar and librarian at the great Library of Alexandria.
I learned this because Harkane have made an ambitious concept album entitled Argo, soon to be released by the Dusktone label, that itself narrates this epic adventure, with express credit given to Appollonius.
Discovering the existence of that poem nearly de-railed my effort to prepare the album-premiere feature you’re now reading, because I also discovered that the entire poem in translation is available for free at Gutenberg.org. I started reading it, and became captivated all over again, stopping only long enough to provide some thoughts about the equally captivating music Harkane have made in their own epic narrative.
The song titles on Argo show that Harkane followed the key events of Jason and his fellow heroes’ extraordinary (and perilous) mission to acquire the Golden Fleece of a winged ram from the sacred grove in Colchis, where it was guarded by a never-sleeping dragon.
They begin with a song called “The Phrixus Escape,” which must refer to the story of how the fleece came to be hung on a tree in that sacred grove.
In a nutshell, that story tells of a hateful royal stepmother (Ino), who sought to kill her stepson Phrixus and his sister Helle. They were rescued by a flying ram with golden wool, which carried Phrixus to Colchis (Helle perished during the journey), where King Aeëtes took him in and treated him kindly. In gratitude, Phrixus sacrificed the ram to Poseidon and gave the king the Golden Fleece of the ram, which Aeëtes hung in a tree in that holy grove of Ares in his kingdom, guarded by that dragon that never slept.
In this song, “The Phrixus Escape,” Harkane present music that’s equal to the task of portraying an ancient and immortal narrative. The legend is of course “larger than life” and supernatural, populated by divinities (both helpful and predatory) and their offspring (both heroic and monstrous), and Harkane‘s music also unfolds on a grand and otherworldly scale. And it’s just as harrowing as the events portrayed in the epic poem.
In that opening song Harkane use moaning classical strings and frightening gasps to create a grim and foreboding mood, and then crash the listener with scarring chords, booming drums, terrorizing howls, and cut-throat screams.
The riffing boils, writhes, and slashes, pernicious and malignant in its tones, but the music changes constantly. Synths eerily shimmer behind a bass that slowly clangs; the music soars but sears, melodically channeling fear and despair; it heavily jolts and cruelly throbs; a guitar poisonously slithers and seems to wail in agony; the drums ferociously batter as the music contorts in frenzies and the vocals howl in madness.
The song packs a viscerally powerful punch, and it’s emotionally dark and disturbing, but as already noted, it operates on a staggering scale, in line with the tale the band are beginning to tell.
From there, having established how the golden fleece came to be in Colchis, Harkane leap forward to the story of how Jason’s quest began, compelled by the devious machinations of King Pelias of Iolcus, who feared (thanks to an oracle) that Jason would kill him, and who expected that Jason and his fellow heroes would not survive the quest.
In “The Oracles of Pelias,” Harkane reinforce the scale and elaborate nature of their musical ambitions for Argo. The music vividly rings like exalted chimes above primitive beats, and it vividly swirls and slithers as the drums explode. Reverent voices sing; orchestral strings come in rapid bursts, adding tension to the fearsomeness and frightfulness of everything else that’s happening; the song coils and uncoils, chiming and moaning, shimmering and detonating, heavily slugging and celestially glowing.
And once again, the dominant moods are ones of extreme peril and fear.
And then comes “Argo,” a song we premiered not long ago. To repeat part of what we wrote then: In this song the sounds build slowly and mysteriously but then burst open in an attack. The music is simultaneously fire-bright and bone-bruising, and seems to capture sensations of danger, fear, and frenzy.
Heroic voices again soar above ravaging snarls, and the brilliantly shivering melody soars too, but also descends as the rhythms pound and jolt. The riffing is no less frenzied but seems more dire and grim — and that turns out to be a prelude to an even greater elevation in the sound.
The music rises in grandeur and expands in scope, and extravagant singing joins in with the harrowing growls, but although the song reveals eye-popping splendor, it’s still a frightening experience, and becomes more ominous as the drums pound and horn-like fanfares blast.
I’ll resist the temptation to continue going track-by-track as Harkane carry the legend forward. In a nutshell, the next seven songs are every bit as gripping as the first three. They dynamically push and pull the pacing and intensity. They use orchestration in both the lesser and greater phases of intensity, sometimes relatively simple and other times breathtaking in its extravagance, but while the orchestration suits the portrayal of an epic story, it doesn’t completely dominate.
Equally important are Harkane‘s deployment of earth-shaking grooves, savage riffing, sorrowful and strident melodies, and a continuing panoply of vocal variations, some bestial and some holy, and all of them spine-tingling.
It should also be said that one thing scholars have observed about Apollonius’ poem is that, unusual for its time, it provided insights into the inner thoughts and emotions of its heroes, revealing the depression and despair they suffered as they encountered one daunting challenge after another.
Those same dark emotions, along with others I’ve already noted — aspects of deceit, cruelty, fear, derangement — repeatedly come through in the music, which underscores that this isn’t a happy tale. Lest you doubt that, just listen to the closing track “Ending,” which features gloomy male singing and ethereal female singing as well as gargantuan growls, and might be more catastrophic and heart-breaking than any other song on the album.
There’s another aspect of Apollonius’ poem that scholars have underscored, i.e., that again unusual for its time, it delved into love, and “the pathology of love,” because during the course of his odyssey, Jason falls for the sorceress Medea, who helps him in his quest, saves his life, later marries him — and later kills their children after Jason attempts to abandon her for another woman, though these latter events aren’t part of The Argonautica.
It’s worth noting that the album track “Medea” is different from most of the others, in that it features solely singing (soulful and agonized feminine singing), combined with mournful strings and momentous timpani. It’s an extremely haunting song, maybe because Harkane (and we) know this union will end in tragedy.
Much more could be said about other songs on the album as well, but it’s probably best to leave you to explore them on their own. Suffice to say: Argo is an enormously compelling accomplishment, as epic and ornate as its subject matter in its renditions of melodic and orchestral black and death metal.
Argo will be released by the Dusktone label on December 13th. As you can see at the outset of this article, it’s adorned by a striking cover painting by Paolo Girardi.
Dusktone will release Argo on digipak CD and digital formats, and those are available for pre-order via the link below. They recommend it for fans of Behemoth, Fleshgod Apocalypse, and SepticFlesh.
ORDER:
https://www.dusktone.org/product/harkane-argo/
https://dusktone.bandcamp.com/album/argo
HARKANE:
https://www.facebook.com/harkaneofficial
https://www.instagram.com/harkane__official/
https://harkane.bandcamp.com/