One Harvest Closer

Last year I rediscovered Harvest, and quickly became obsessed with everything that the band did. I bought every Harvest record that I could get my hands on... and unfortunately that ended up being one single 7 inch. Goddamn. Why was it so difficult to find records from these 90's hardcore bands that I was just discovering and falling in love with? The world is cruel.

Back in July, I got a tip from Marcus that Wanna Hear It Records had the grey vinyl version of Harvest's One Step Closer Than The Last 7 inch available in their online webstore. We both thought the price was little high, but after talking it over for a couple of minutes I decided it was worth pulling the trigger now instead of waiting another year for one to pop up for sale and possibly save $10. Fuck it. I love this band too much to fuck around over price... just get into my collection.

These four songs are so good, and I'm glad that I grabbed this. Now someone just needs to let go of their orange version of this 7 inch so I can get my hands on that too.

Living With A Harvest Complex

I've found myself obsessed with a few 90's hardcore bands this year. Bands that I didn't think that I really liked all that much, but suddenly I've found myself unable to get enough. The problem that I've found with some of these bands is that their records seem more difficult to find than I had expected. Because of course, since I wasn't listening to or collecting records for these bands, no one else was, right? I should be able to scoop these records fairly easily. Wrong. I want this shit now, and Discogs and eBay aren't delivering. With Harvest, Marcus even asked a friend of his if he wanted to part with any of his records, but it seemed like that was one band that he still wanted to hold onto. Fuck.

As I was scouring the internet, I found a label called Hardcore Matinee that was doing a special run of Harvest shirts. It was a preorder where they were only doing the one run to cover orders and then it was done... and I kept playing with the idea of buying one. I went back to the store every couple of days to wring my hands over if I should buy one, and then I noticed that they had found a few copies of the Living With A God Complex reissue that they did back in 2018, and they put them up in the store... so I took it as a sign and bought the record and the shirt.

I try to stay away from reissues, but this 21st anniversary edition is so nice... and since I haven't been able to track down an original copy, this one will do for now. That's okay though, because this edition is really nice. With the special sleeve, the thick booklet with lyrics and photos, and all the special touches like the stamped labels, I'm happy to own this.

Number 268 of 300.

90's Week: Part 1 - Harvest

There seems to be a point each year where I find myself fixated on 90's hardcore. There is something about that decade that continually draws me back, and it will stick me with delusions that it is all that I want to listen to for the rest of my life. During those deepest obsessions, I'll find myself hunched over the computer in a dark room, my face lit by the glow of the screen, scrolling through the inventory of Discogs sellers and spending money like the end of civilization is just around the corner and nothing matters anymore except the sweet rush of buying a new record. That has been the picture of me over the past few months.

After being knocked on my ass by discovering Disembodied at the start of the year, I've found myself chasing that same rush and looking for other bands that I didn't pay too much attention to in the 90's.

I owned a couple of Harvest CD's back in the late 90's, but to be honest I didn't really spend much time with them. I was all about the straight forward hardcore bands at the time, and Harvest were a bit too metallic for me to really pay much attention to. I'd give the CD's an occasional spin, but nothing really stuck with me other than the fact that it sounded like the singer was doing some weird kind of thing where he was singing the words on the inhale instead projecting the words on the exhale. I don't know... it didn't work for me then, and it had been about 20 years since I'd bothered to listen to the band.

Desperate for something more along the lines of Disembodied, I queued up the Harvest collection, Transitions, that contains all of their early 7 inches and comp songs... and holy shit, I loved it. This was exactly what I was looking for. It was chunky and screaming, angry and metallic hardcore... and I fucking ate it up.

The next step was to obviously hunt down some records, and I assumed that I'd be able to swoop in on Discogs and buy a bunch of them for relatively cheap. Surprisingly that was not the case. I guess that I assumed that people wouldn't be paying any attention to 90's metallic hardcore bands in 2025, but apparently I'm wrong. Finding any Harvest records was tough work, and what I did find, sellers weren't letting it go for cheap. Maybe I overpaid for this purple vinyl copy of this Harvest 7 inch from 1996, but I don't know, I was just desperate to feed the obsession and I grabbed it.

Harvest appeared to like contributing to comps in the late 90's, showing up on The Difference Between Us and A Document Of Nothing, and while I'm not sure I want to chase comp albums, I had no problem grabbing the blue vinyl for this Twin Cities Hardcore 7 inch comp.

Other than Harvest, I'm really not familiar with any of the bands on this comp. I actually own a Killsadie CD that I bought back in the day, but haven't listened to it since then and I couldn't tell you anything about it, but listening to their song, as well as the one from Silent Fall makes me want to check out more from these bands.