Hanging Garden - At Every Door
At ease, Suicidal Black Metal devotees. This isn’t a new offering of sadness from A. Morbid. This is the other Hanging Garden, the Doom band from Finland. Although, At Every Door may still contain some worth for the misery-addicted lifehaters among us. I suppose any band inclined to name themselves after a Cure song is going to possess some inherent leaning towards the depressive side. This Hanging Garden are practitioners of the Saturnus school of thought: whisperspeak softly and carry a big growl. They believe nothing brings out a bestial Doom growl like spoken or whispered bits. They also believe in long songs, keyboards, big riffs, and a pervading atmosphere of romantic dreariness not unlike the immortal early works of Celestial Season. However, their real ace in the hole is a very convincing style of clean singing that I feel may eventually propel them near the top of the Gothic Doom heap. It is the clean vocals that truly complement those brutal roars, and provide the album’s most memorable moments. The music follows the temperament of the varied vocal approaches, as loud and quiet trade off in equally morose fashion. Passages of subdued melody and reflection wait for explosions of distorted rage bearing mournful dirge. At times the band is a little rough around the edges —the Industrial ambiance that begins “Wormwood” feels somewhat awkward, though the song is later redeemed by an infectious clean-sung hook— and tracks that extend past the 6-minute mark tend to drag a bit —the band exhaust the back-and-forth of the poetry recital and gruff lament to mind-numbing effect on mini-epic “The Cure” (see what they did there?), while it’s even harder to stay focused on 10-minute closer “To End All Ages”— but they have all the tools, along with a ton of potential. I’d personally like to see them scale back some of the melodrama and up the bleakness factor to a Katatonic level a la Rapture. They definitely have the talent to pull it off.
Favorites: “Ten Thousand Cranes,” “Ash and Dust.”
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