Hangman’s Chair: The Power Of Sadness
Parisian masters of doom, HANGMAN’S CHAIR have just brought out their latest album, the utterly sublime Saddiction. The record is an epic sonic tour de force that demonstrates the full power of the music of HANGMAN’S CHAIR, which is at times heartbreakingly melancholic but never anything other than truly mesmerising. Even though it is only the second month of the year, it is already an album of the year contender.
To celebrate the release of Saddiction, we caught up with drummer Mehdi Birouk Thépegnier to talk about Saddiction and the important issues the album deals with.
We begin this chat about Saddiction with Mehdi telling us the literal meaning of the albums title being about not only being addicted to sadness but how that relates to the ethos HANGMAN’S CHAIR. “It’s something like that. When Julien found the name, It is sincere about what we are and the concept of the band. Since the beginning, we always talked about sadness and depression and how everything relates about our lives, but also every listener can get into it also, because it’s a natural thing happening in our lives,” he explains. “You can be addicted about sadness and being sad, and also you can be sad with all your addictions, so it definitely works for us.”
With HANGMAN’S CHAIR recently putting up a message on their Instagram page about music helping you through feelings of sadness, despair and loneliness. Mehdi tells of how the band’s intention with this album was to address those feelings and have an element of hope as well. “That’s what we always try to do. We need to find a balance into the music. What we live in our lives, and what we feel in this world, despair, anguish, depressions, but music helps us to get through.”
Mehdi then discusses where HANGMAN’S CHAIR are at right now with their music and how it gives them hope amongst the abject despair. “It’s our seventh album, and we always write very sad music so I think that we need it as well, to feel better. I like to watch sad movies. I love to read sad books. I need that feeling, to feel better and I think we do with HANGMAN’S CHAIR. We need to find the balance, to give a little bit of light, to contrast with shadows.”
Mehdi then tells of the influences on the sound of Saddiction and the band in general. “We come from a hardcore background, so we grew up in that scene but we’ve been listening to a lot of cold wave, new wave, UK post-punk. We share that aggressive hardcore punk background but with the cold sounds and textures from the cold wave and new wave. So maybe it’s a combination of those two.”
With the songs on Saddiction very much dealing with more morose subjects, Mehdi divulged that releasing the record on Valentine’s Day was very much planned and fits in well with what they are doing with this record. “Oh, that was intentional, the label suggested a few release dates, and when they when they suggested Valentine’s Day, we said, ‘that makes sense to drop an album on that day!’”
Talk then turns to the brilliant album track 2Am Thoughts and how the experience of working with Dutch dark rock band DOOL for the song went. “It was very natural. Raven is an incredible singer and we’ve know her and DOOL a long time. We were thinking about someone to invite on the song, and we thought about Raven straight away.”
The band embarked on a trek across Europe with the Dutch dark rockers at the tail end of 2024, with Mehdi revealing how the European run went. “There’s always positive and negative things on tour but it was great. We did think it might have been a bit early because of when the album was out but it went well.”
He then told of some of the highlights of the tour. “All our French shows, it’s always great in Holland as well. Germany was great, our first time in Dublin and then the UK. Playing at Damnation Festival was awesome. It was the last show of the tour and that was probably the highlight. Very good audience, nice live performance, and very nice feedback!”
With Saddiction now out, HANGMAN’S CHAIR will be back out in the road to support it, though it may take a little longer due to some personal circumstances as Mehdi told us. “Actually it is a little bit difficult to me to talk about right now. There are personal reasons, and a few things that we need to deal with but we will be back on tour, maybe in a few months.”
We end this great chat with Mehdi with him going back and telling us about the band’s hardcore background he mentioned earlier and his time with formidable Belgian hardcore crew ARKANGEL and their strong family bond with HANGMAN’S CHAIR. “We met those guys in the early 90s when they started, and we had a very close relation with that Belgian hardcore scene. Buldar, the singer, called me to join them so I played bass for them for 10 years, and then Julien also joined on second guitar. I left the band in 2010 and my bass player Clement replaced me on bass, so it’s a family affair!”
Saddiction is out now via Nuclear Blast Records.
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