Album Type: Full Length
Date Released: 25 July 2012
Label: Bones Brigade
Track Listing
| 1. | The Saddest Call | 6:54 | |
| 2. | Open Veins | 6:35 | |
| 3. | Ain't Living Long Like That | 7:22 | |
| 4. | December | 5:48 | |
| 5. | A Scar To Remember | 8:30 | |
| 6. | Alley's End | 6:22 | |
| 7. | Hope///Dope///Rope | 10:55 | |
| Total Running time | 52:26 | ||
Bio
Hangman’s
Chair are from Crosne, just outside Paris, France. They formed in 2005 and
immediately started peddling their stoner/doom /gloom sound. With songs about drug addiction, depression
and suicide, they signed to Bones Brigade records and now have a healthy vita.
With this
their third full length, and also two split E.P’s, the first of those was
released in 2007 with fellow French doom band Eibon. Then they released the awesome first album, A Lament for the Addicts the same year
and quickly made a name for themselves, in the world of doom. They released their second full length, called Leaving Paris in 2010 and then a split with Drawers earlier this year too.
The four
piece has had some line-up changes since that first record, and I think it’s
just Julien and Mehdi that are the original members.
Current line-up:
Clement Hanvic – Bass guitar
Mehdi
Birouk Thepegnier- Drums
Julien Rour Chanut- Guitars
Cedric Toufouti- Vocals
Review
The first
track on this awesome miserable threnody, The
Saddest Call starts off with a
sample of school kids chanting a hangman elegy, which really does put you in
the mood for some doom. The guitars come in with a slow chordal riff depicting
the themes, but are actually as catchy as hell. Immediately hooked and
wondering “Why isn’t this band bigger”?
And after a quick Google search, I find that they are indeed getting bigger,
with tour dates in Australia. Cool.
The album
artwork is cool too, with a glum looking figure clad in black, on a blood red
Parisian background.
Open veins runs straight in off the back of the
first track, continuing said pace and gloom with themes of drug addiction and a
great use of film samples. Ain’t Living
Long Like That comes in with nice chuggy riffs and good fat tones (which continue
throughout the album). Cedric Toufouti has
a great vocal range and utilises it well.
The songs are all well formulated and sequenced.
December, dare I say it? Has a ballady feel
but there’s no love songs on this baby. Alleys End has a classic blues feel and
all the songs on this album are different to the next, some with more
commercial tendencies than others, like this one.
Well as I lay in my
cold bath with my bloody veins exposed, my lifeblood dripping away, maybe I
should tell you about the last and title track. Hope///Dope///Rope is definitely the
album highlight, at nearly eleven minutes, it’s the spoken word introduction
that does it. Basically he’s telling us
that Mother Nature has had enough of the human race and is now preparing a nice
little brew to keep us all under control.
But hey, at least we get 8 more minutes of that wicked melancholic doom
riffery. Great stuff.
Written by: John Slaymaker
This record is an absolute belter and we at The Sludgelord cannot recommend it highly enough. Massive thanks to the band for hooking us up with a promo of the record and I hope we repaid that faith with this killer review. Big thanks to go out to Seb from Abrahma who recommended we check out this brilliant band. For more info about the band check out the link below. You can actually download their first two records for free from their bandcamp page. You also download two free tracks from this record as well. Buy the record from Bones Brigade here
1 comment:
I like this band and their new album is,again, completely different from the one before!
This time, it's more doom and dark side of the band, and again, it's a great album!
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