Hangman's Chair : "A Loner"

 The French band's 2018 album "Banlieue Triste" took the top spot as Doom album of the year. This time around things are dialed back in the metal department. They straddle the fence sonically in a zip code closer to post-nu metal Deftones and Katatonia. There is a driving riff when the opening track kicks in once the clouds of atmosphere have lifted.  The lead single "Cold & Distant" is more accessible than anything we have heard from them thus far. It's a pretty driving song, that is catchy without being too poppy in the hook. It very well written and goes to show accessibility is not always a sign of weakness. 

A Cure like bass line leads into "Who Wants to Die Old". This is also where it feels like the album begins to sail out into the gray of its atmosphere. The vocals have more of a hushed urgency to them. Midway into the song harder edged guitar comes in. To call it metal would be to call a band like A Perfect Circle metal. Dark rock becomes a more fitting description with this album. But whatever it is that you want to call this it should be known that they continue to excel at what they do. The vocals were always cool, but they spent more time in the booth getting every note perfect. "Storm Resounds " is a ballad but a darkly beautiful one, that still has balls even without resorting to conveying this is the normal manner most rock bands do. 

On "Supreme" they simmer for half the song. When the guitar does drop it's a similar guitar riff that they use in almost a post punk manner to drive the tension. "Pariah and the Plague" is more atmospheric. It's melodic with some really great guitar tones. The entire album sounds good, it is just more intangible and lingers in its introspection. An instrumental of this sort was not what you would expect from them. The title track is more moving. Darkly introspective as the rest of the album, it makes less of an attempt to rock out and brooding more than simmers. "Second Wind" is more deliberate, which in turn feels heavier. The vocals are perhaps the album's most emotive. " A Thousand Miles Away" lingers on a drone for a while before stomping into perhaps the album's only song I would refer to as doom, and most certainly it's heaviest. They know there is more than one way to be heavy , this is perhaps the most overt, but the album as a whole is more about capturing a mood, which they have, it is going to take a little time to grow on me, but I respect that they did not try to recreate the previous album and made steps forward, I will round this one up to a 10.   Out on Nuclear Blast.