Band:	Hangman's Chair
Album:	A Loner
Style:	Gothic doom metal
Release date:	February 2022

01. An Ode To Breakdown
02. Cold & Distant
03. Who Wants To Die Old
04. Storm Resounds
05. Supreme
06. The Pariah And The Plague
07. Loner
08. Second Wind
09. A Thousand Miles Away

What if you tripped on downers?

Maybe "trip" is no longer the right word. When I first came across Hangman's Chair, I was certain that they would be some sort of grimy ugly sludge. They turned out to have some sludge in their music, but it was mostly as a backdrop to the stoner doom. And to be fair, even back then, it was some of the saddest stoner doom you could find. Just by looking at their cover arts and album titles you could kinda get that downer feeling from it, which was pretty contrasted by the groovy psychedelia of the music. In that sense 2015's This Is Not Supposed To Be Positive was quite a watershed moment, feeling like the first time that Hangman's Chair merged the doom sounds to create an atmosphere fitting of their overall aesthetic, marrying stoner doom, sludge doom, gothic doom. Two albums later, Hangman's Chair sounds like a pretty different band from the one that they started as.

They always were a doom metal band, and they remain one, but the nuances have changed. Psychedelic is probably not a word I would associate with their music as much anymore, even if their past as a stoner band still has some artefacts left in the music. And maybe a lot of it is just me reading way too much into them because of their past. The bass is probably the biggest betrayer of the sludge sounds in the band's past, since such gloomy music is usually not supported by such punchy bass. A Loner has more in common with mid-era Paradise Lost than mid-era Katatonia flavor of the previous album. In that the gothic sounds that permeate sound less metal and more in line with goth rock and coldwave. But also merged with a doom metal sense of dread and melody that feels more like a blend of goth and doom rather than mere gothic doom.

A Loner is very gloomy and lethargic, and there's definitely an emphasis on effects-fueled atmosphere. There's an almost gaze-y sense of melody in how the walls of guitars washes you up, and the reduced emphasis on groove means that a lot of the album is carried by how immersive the gloom is. There are moments that lean more towards the goth rock side of things, some that are more shoegaze-y, some that are heavier, but the emphasis never really fundamentally changes and the melodies are there primarily to sustain the gloom. The vocals are one of the record's highlight, with the beautiful vocals feeling a bit too grunge-like for the sound, but the resulting contrast making the album more interesting rather than damaging immersion.

A Loner solidifies Hangman's Chair's transition into a goth band, one with a very ethereal sense of gloom, yet something does make me hope that one successful transition would make them ambitious towards attempting even more changes rather than comfortably setting into this sound. But if that ends up being the case, we're still in for a treat.