(We present DGR’s review of the ninth album from Hanging Garden, released on March 20th by Agonia Records.)
I have struggled with how I wanted to start writing up Finland’s Hanging Garden and their newest album Isle Of Bliss. They’ve been “blessed” enough to join the club of groups whose opening review paragraphs have seen more rewrites each year than your standard superhero movie. It’s not any fault of their own either; the blame lies entirely at my feet.
I think a large part of the difficulty comes from the fact that although Hanging Garden have been active for the better part of two decades and have been very consistent in releasing albums or EPs (they seem to thrive on album-EP- album cycle with little breath in between), I haven’t been one to yell from the rooftops about them, in spite of how much I’ve enjoyed everything they’ve done. So, in a roundabout way, it feels like any time I want to write about Hanging Garden I need to begin with an apology of sorts for not using my pulpit to preach their gospel to the masses.
Hanging Garden are one of the best out there in a saturated genre of melancholy-infused doom and goth-rock groups. Even when the band have been experimental – which surprisingly is where they first caught my attention with the very Paradise Lost-leaning Blackout/Whiteout in 2015 – before fully adopting a very melodramatic death and doom persona, their releases have been some of the most steady-footed, good-to-great collections you can find. There are athletes who would kill for Hanging Garden’s sort of batting average.
The even better part of all of this, now that the guilt of not being as loud about them as I could’ve been has been waylaid somewhat until their next release, is that the group’s newest album Isle Of Bliss – which saw release in late March via Agonia Records – is absolutely stunning and only reinforces the fact that the Hanging Garden collective are stealthily one of the best out there at this particular style.
photo by Jani Kormu
It needs to be said that, if nothing else, Hanging Garden are getting their money’s worth out of the vocals team of Riikka Hatakka and Toni Hatakka by the end of opening song “To Outlive The Nine Ravens” on its own. The pairing of dark and deathly growl and lighter, angelic voice is one that has been commonplace in metal but to witness it executed so well serves as a great reminder as to why this is the case. Over the years Hanging Garden have developed quite a few different singers in their lineup and they all combine in Isle Of Bliss’ opening, so that each opening verse and chorus sound as if they are being done by a choir rather than just two individuals.
The rest of the Hanging Garden crew create a fantastically melodramatic song to back up the bombast on the vocals as well, the misery-leaden doom and heavy drumming sounding gargantuan in comparison. That main pacing and guitar-lead, especially, will not leave one shocked to learn that some of the Swallow The Sun crew might’ve helped out behind the scenes on Isle Of Bliss, as there are a small handful of moments wherein it seems like Hanging Garden are declaring “well, someone has to take up this sort of ‘beauty in frozen wasteland’ style and if they’re not interested at the moment then it is going to be us”. All you need is a quick tour of the equally gorgeous “Eternal Trees Of Turquoise” to hear how Hanging Garden are positioning themselves to be the standard-bearer they always were, but never got the credit or praise for it.
Of course, when we speak of this style of melodic death and doom metal hybrid as it is ever entranced with its own reflection in a broken mirror, it needs to be acknowledged that melancholy runs deep like a subterranean river in this music. Hanging Garden are part of a storied collective of bands who specialize in that style and they’ve long been toiling away in its mines, releasing albums that have been equal parts beautiful and absolutely crushing. Though they’ve never quite sunk as deep in the depths of despair as some of their cohorts, they have certainly had their moments of “this would be beautiful if it weren’t devastating” throughout their career. They’ve also leaned more and more into that style as their career has gone on, shifting gears between albums and EPs to finally land at their current crystalized form on Isle Of Bliss.
The opening four songs tour the listener through the album’s various moods, ranging from the gargantuan and epic-sounding “To Outlive The Nine Ravens” to the much moodier “To The Gates Of Hel” only three songs later. In between, the band make use of a massive keyboard swell and Katatonia-esque guitar opening in the titular “Isle Of Bliss” and fantastic goth-metal throwback in the aforementioned beauty of “Eternal Trees Of Turquoise”. Those four songs are the basic building blocks from which Isle Of Bliss extends itself outward, each one finding a mirrored twin of itself in the back half of the disc, ranging between four to six and a half minutes in length. Hanging Garden drift between slow treads of the death and doom variety to the pensive guitar leads of Swallow The Sun’s playground, all placing the band among the all-star class of Finland’s death and doom exports.
“The Death Upon Our Shoulders” is interesting for the hard turns the song takes in its introductory segments, initially promising something more funereal and apocalyptic and then shifting into a calmer sung verse. Laying halfway into the album, “The Death Upon Our Shoulders” is far more sung than bellowed and is a solid halfway checkpoint before Hanging Garden sail into the waters of the back half of their album, where songs like the surprisingly up-tempo “Arise, Black Sun” marks its territory.
“Arise, Black Sun” opens with a battering of double-bass rolls and galloping guitar, leaving just enough room for keyboardist Nino Hynninen to make his mark over the top of the song. While an ever-constant presence within Hanging Garden’s overall sound and responsible for many of Isle Of Bliss’ more-epic moments, it’s the light melody that lies over the otherwise room-collapsing heaviness of “Arise, Black Sun” that takes on serious importance and donates more spirit to the atmospherics of the song than you’d expect to give initial credit for. The guitar gallop is constructed more for blatant headbanging than absolute beauty yet Hanging Garden do well existing at the intersection of the two. Its younger brother “Her Waning Light” is more soul-rending in that regard, yet the song does drift into familiar territory as Hanging Garden begin to favor the calmer sung verses within every second song on Isle Of Bliss.
Hanging Garden have gathered a collective of skilled musicians in their ranks during the past decade, all dedicated to a mission of rendering overwhelming sadness in audio form. Isle Of Bliss is carefully crafted in that regard, pulling from a playbook of the melancholic and pensive that has been well-read throughout the years. Specific parts of any song that’ve been broken out will be very recognizable to people who have even a passing familiarity with the genre, but what makes Isle Of Bliss work so well is that Hanging Garden know how to take those parts and craft them into songs that are larger than the sum of the parts. Yes, many people are involved, but Hanging Garden doesn’t work without the multi-directional vocal work, the echoed guitar attack, or the ever-present keyboard.
Hanging Garden are making a statement that if the current misery-throne be vacated while bands explore something more hard-rock-leaning and completely sung, then they can just as easily take the throne. Isle Of Bliss is a fine demonstration of the death, doom, and goth-rock flavored hybrid of music that is just as pretty as it is pain-filled. Songs of heartbreak and mythology unite in allegory on Isle Of Bliss, and its nine songs make forty-six and a half-minutes vanish like any sense of hope this year might’ve had.
https://agoniarecords.com/en/hanging_garden
https://agoniarecords.bandcamp.com/album/isle-of-bliss
http://hanging-garden.org/
https://www.facebook.com/hanginggardenofficial