Following up their 2022 debut, Ache and Impulse (review here), Salt Lake City atmospheric sludge metallers Harvest of Ash return in March with Castaway. The second LP is self-released from what I can tell, where the first album was out through Horror Pain Gore Death, and is led off by its title-track, which also serves as the first single, introducing the sense of lumber that comes through in the low end to give the entire nigh-on-seven-minute procession a doomlier cast. With Pepper Glass‘ gutturalisms over top, the downer idolatry resonates, but there’s more happening in “Castaway” than defeat as well as it leads into the rest of the album.

And I’m just first-blush in terms of listening, admittedly, but things don’t seem to get any less monstrous after “Castaway” from what I can tell. I’ll hope to have more to come around the release, but March 7 is the date if you’re looking to mark your calendar, and the PR wire brought info and audio to put in your brain:

HARVEST OF ASH: Salt Lake City’s doom trio set to release sophomore LP on March 7th, 2025

The writing and recording of Salt Lake City’s Harvest of Ash second full length album was a dark time for the band. Lineup changes and injuries stopped the band for months at a time. Yet, they took all of this calamity and channeled it into a new album about confronting and overcoming chaos. What they produced is a new album, titled Castaway.

In Castaway, Harvest of Ash has excavated the crevasses of calamity and emerged with an uncompromisingly filthy and punishing, yet skillfully crafted, work.

Lyrically, it charts a journey from self-criticism and feelings of rejection to being happy with who you are and what you have become as a person. A main theme of the work is the idea of amor fati, or love of fate. This is the notion of living life in an authentic way, embracing every decision and path taken – good and bad – as uniquely your own, that you would do everything the same way again. This makes Castaway a deeply personal statement about when you feel the bottom has dropped out of your life, and reclaiming value in yourself during these times.

Salt Lake City’s geography is a study of contrasts. Towering mountains, expressing power and grandeur, meet with desert emptiness – a completely flat limitlessness where barely a shrub is able to grow. Enormous and overwhelming, three-piece doom band Harvest of Ash conjures both the magnificence of mountain ranges and the desolation of barren deserts.

Tracklisting:
1. Castaway
2. Embracing
3. Shine
4. Constellation
5. Of beloved flame

Recorded and mixed by Wes Johnson at Archive Recordings,
Salt Lake City, Utah, February & May 2024
Mastered by Stephan Hawkes in North Hollywood, CA

Harvest of Ash:
Pepper Glass: guitar/vocals
Mike DiTullio: drums/percussion
Ben Dodds: bass

https://facebook.com/harvestofash/
http://instagram.com/HarvestofAsh
https://harvestofash.bandcamp.com/
https://linktr.ee/harvestofash

Harvest of Ash, Castaway (2025)