Hanging Garden - Inherit The Eden
Spinefarm

file under doom metal

Vera: Latterly a pretty large sprinkling of amazing, fine doom albums has been released. We can add ‘Inherit The Eden’ to that list now, the debut album of Hanging Garden, a Finnish band that came into the spotlights in February 2006 with a first promo and they could promptly ink a deal with Spikefarm Records. It is really unbelievable how much good bands Finland (actually all the Scandinavian countries) has engendered.

The musicians of Hanging Garden are active in Shamrain and Dauntless as well. When vocalist Ari Nieminen and bassist/keyboardist Matti Reinola in 2004 decided to form a new band with the intention to make slow and doomy music, they wanted to combine the qualities of their existing bands – Matti’s dark rock gothic act Shamrain and Ari’s thrash/death metal outfit Dauntless – into something new and special. They started looking for congenial musicians and in February 2006 they were able to present their first compositions at the Finnish Metal Expo. ‘Inherit The Eden’ was recorded at the Tico Tico Studios with Ahti Kortelainen and the mixing was done at the Finnvox Studios. The sound is massive, but crystal clear where needed.

As doom fan it is a true pleasure to listen to ‘Inherit The Eden’. The music is fluent, relaxing and melodious, but on the other hand interlarded with brutal eruptions and raucous vocals. Ari Nieminen has a gruff growl/grunt sometimes passing into a scream-like timbre. It perfectly fits the music of Hanging Garden. These are long songs, mostly rather slow, but injected with necessary accelerations to keep it engrossing. Keyboards are important as soaring, atmospheric factor and together with the melodic, meandering guitars, they give the music an ethereal beauty. ‘Ethereal Passing’ and ‘Stillborn’ are two shorter instrumental songs that are very beautiful and calm. The compositions are graced with acoustic interludes on guitars. The album is one huge doom manifest, a bit along the lines of their fellow countrymen Swallow The Sun, although there are no sonorous clean vocals here. It is preferable to listen to it as a whole, but if I have to pick out one song, I go for ‘Shards Of Life’ that combines surprisingly up tempo gothic guitars with chopping riffs, slower passages and a fast and furious outburst including a ferocious scream. This album has the saturnine beauty of Finnish nature and is highly recommended to all aficionados of melodic doom/death metal.

Rating 90/100 (details)

http://www.hanging-garden.net

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