HANGMAN'S CHAIR: A Loner (DOOM): review / opinion to read on Music Waves

Rare are the bands that manage to build a style that belongs only to them. Hangman's Chair is undoubtedly one of them. Thus, little by little, the French have shaped a singular rock, built on a heavy doom/stoner style softened by an expressive vocals soaked in cold wave. Talent and personality fortunately pay off, as shown by the alliance sealed between the band and the powerful Nuclear Blast, a collaboration that will undoubtedly allow the band to reach a wider audience, but which is nevertheless surprising as the German label remains very metal.

However, the more the years go by and the albums with them, the more Hangman's Chair seems to want to detach itself from its roots to wander somewhere on the periphery of a rock more gothic than metal as illustrated by "A Loner" of which Type O Negative or even the most decried Paradise Lost, that of "Host" (1999), are sometimes not far away. However, this juicy commercial partnership did not empty Hangman's Chair of their marrow as the title of their sixth album suggests, evocative of this insidious evil that gangrene our modern societies, more and more connected, open and which at the same time leaves more and more people on the road, isolated or banished.

As always, the music of Hangman's Chair fits perfectly into the cinematographic universe. Gloomy, depressing and realistic of course, as shown by the very successful clips illustrating 'Cold &Distant' (with Béatrice Dalle) and even more so by 'Loner', a documentary that digs into the flesh and soul of poignant stigmas.

The quartet's sticky melancholy finds first of all in 'An Ode To Breakdown' then the already quoted 'Cold & Distant' the mean to express its pregnant pain. Way to reassure the listener with riffs cast in the asphalt which irrigate a beginning with metallic seams. But from 'Who Wants To Die Old', dominated by Cedric Toufouti's tragic and aerial voice, the album seems to want to take another path, less sludge and more cold wave, even if there is still something of the heavy and cold roots of its progenitors. And what can we say about 'Storm Resounds' whose intimist features are however underlined by these crazy guitars recognizable between thousand.

The more his menu unwinds and the more the rhythm gets bogged down in a slowness as hypnotic as morose ('Supreme' with sometimes almost post rock accents), marauding in a washed out pop ('Loner', 'Second Wind'). As they did on "Banlieue triste", the band ends its race with a composition which gravitates around the ten minutes but this time without stretching unnecessarily. 'A Thousand Miles Away' is the sum of all that preceded it, a vaporous and percluse painting all together thanks to which the opus dies on a bitter and elusive note.

Less and less doom without diluting its cold and tenacious melancholy, Hangman's Chair continues to trace its road with "A Loner", furrowing the scarred faults of a society in perdition...
- Official website

HANGMAN'S CHAIR

A LONER

NUCLEAR BLAST

DOOM