Review by Saxy S for Hanging Garden (FIN) - The Garden (2023)

I did not listen to a lot of metal music in 2019. During that time I was firmly in my folk/americana era, where artists like Jason Isbell were my passion. When the year ended, I realized that I had listened next to nothing in the metal sphere, so I took it upon myself to search out some other rock/metal acts that released albums that released albums that year. Among those found were Altesia, Wilderun, and Hanging Garden. Now, I thought that Into That Good Night was an okay album; I liked it post-metal leanings, but was turned away by meandering song structures. Recently, I've started to embrace those blind spots in my metal listening and review more albums in genres that I don't frequent, such as Fallen pillars of doom and gothic metal.

With The Garden, I felt much the same way at the beginning. The title track is a solid opener with a good hook and great counterpoint between the clean singing and harsh death metal growling. But just when I thought we were getting another slow, melancholic tune as "The Garden" fades out, "The Four Winds" picks up the tempo and subverts expectations. It's not too much of a deviation in style for Hanging Garden, but it does allow for the return of the slower death-doom tempos to be more impactful on "The Song of Spring". I found myself really grooving with "The Fire at First Dawn" as the male vocals are sung in a clean timbre and the guitar is given more of a quasi-solo role.

I have a hard time rating this album any higher though. While I do find the album to be a fairly solid listen from top to bottom and there aren't any insultingly bad tracks here, something about this albums middle portion just does not resonate with me. I can tell that in some contexts, "The Nightfall", "The Stolen Fire" and "The Journey" are good tracks, but for me they just seem derivative. Maybe it was the vocal timbre, where the male vocalist options for clean vocals more, leaving the female vocalist as basically a background. Either way, it does not ruin The Garden that much and does make for a pleasant listen, but keep in mind that this garden might not be as lush as bands like Draconian or Swallow the Sun.

Best Songs: The Four Winds, The Fire at First Dawn, The Fireside