ALBUM REVIEW: A Loner – Hangman’s Chair
When people think of Paris, they probably imagine the world’s most romantic city, known the world over for its culture, fine dining and rich history. One thing that may not come to mind though is doom metal. Well, enter HANGMAN’S CHAIR, a band from the outskirts of the city who have been working incredibly hard to change all of that with their shoegaze/doom metal hybrid songwriting, massive hooks and bone-shakingly heavy instrumentals. The band have laid down an impressive collection of five full-length albums, a handful of splits and an EP, yet with their sixth full length album A Loner they’ve managed to sound like a fresh-faced new act with the bit between their teeth.
The album opens with the track An Ode To Breakdown. The song is truly a tour de force of atmospheric songwriting and lays the foundation for the rest of the album to build upon with its booming drums and echoed guitars adding to the ethereal sound. The low, rumbling bassline pairs up with the carefully chosen thick guitar tones and gives the perfect platform for vocalist Cédric Toufouti to lay his beautiful, soulful singing over. The guitar riffs on this track and throughout this album aren’t the most technical, but when they are this well-crafted and dialled in to the requirements of the music it really doesn’t matter, in fact in complete contrast to this it makes everything fall into place.
The following track Cold & Distant picks up from where the last song left off and leans heavily on the distorted guitars with gazey, dreamy effects on the guitar giving things a melancholic feel. The harmonized singing on this song shows once again the band’s penchant for delivering beautiful melodic hooks, with this track in particular having an almost OPETH-esque approach to the vocal patterns.
To refer to HANGMAN’S CHAIR as simply a doom metal band is to do them an unforgivable injustice. Throughout this album the band offer so much more than that as they navigate their way through numerous genres seamlessly. A perfect example of this is Supreme, which sounds more like a post-metal opus, more in keeping with bands such as NEUROSIS and CULT OF LUNA than what you would expect to find on your run of the mill doom metal release. Once again, the vocals are a massive selling point for the song and tie the together with a neat bow over the top of the full drum sound and bouncing bass riffs.
The band are at their best when they embrace the more serene elements of their sound, captivating the audience with their blend of haunting beauty and desperate melancholy. This is no more apparent than with arguably the biggest highlight of the album Pariah And The Plague. From the very outset the echoed tones and chilling atmospherics wash over you in a way that feels almost more like a score from a motion picture than something that you would expect to hear on a metal album.
The heaviest track on A Loner is saved for last. The walls of distortion on A Thousand Miles Away crash like one-hundred-foot waves and devastate everything in their path. This is well written, carefully produced metal music that ensures that the listener gets to experience every little nuance to its fullest. The layers of distorted guitars are mixed in such a way that they are powerful and effective without becoming overwhelming or messy and the riffs are simple, yet unquestionably heavy, just begging to have their fans’ heads banging along. HANGMAN’S CHAIR are a band that know their craft, having spent years honing it, and it seems that in 2022 the world may very well be their oyster. It’s early doors yet, but we have an album here that will surely be on many AOTY lists come December.
Rating: 9/10
A Loner is set for release on February 11th via Nuclear Blast Records.
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