Hanging Garden-How Will You Live Your Life Today? Review

1. Only In My Mind
2. Under The Hanging Vines
3. Somewhere In My Heart
4. Will I End Up Loosing You Some Day
5. An Urge To Withdraw
6. Past Mistakes In Life
7. Tears Of A Silent Rain
8. A Beautiful Song Of Never Reached Dreams

Hanging Garden, not be confused with the Finnish doom act, is a suicidal depressive black metal from the USA. Along with some other acts like Happy Days, Hanging Garden really stands out from all the USA depressive clonies. From my experience, it is rare to find a good inspiring black metal from the USA in general. This is one reason I almost passed this opus. I thought it would be a pretty bland album. After I found out that Morbid, one of the members of Happy Days was in it as the drummer, I had to check it out because Happy Days is one of my favorite depressive bands from the USA. I really didn't expect anything from it but boy was I wrong.

How Will You Live Your Life Today? includes 8 aspiring depressive tracks that will fill up an empty void with negativity and death. This dark art truly can be used as a suicidal soundtrack to manifest the emotions of loneliness and forlorn hope. The musicianship of Hanging Garden is pretty good and different. Rather than relying on distorted heavy guitars with the flow, the guitars are more in a fading manner creating some mournful and post rock like guitar tones and harmonies. All songs are done in a mid pace constant flow of solitude. Songs like Under the Hanging Vine, Somewhere In my Heart, and Will I End Up Loosing You Someday will have you reaching out for help from the darkness in its extremity. Past Mistakes in Life and Tears of a Silent Rain will get you thinking if there is any hope left with its bleak guitar melodies. All the songs are good in their own way and display a pretty strong emotion for the listener. The vocals of B are pretty chilling as well, especially his somber clean woes. Wow, you can just feel desolation. They mix throughout from a black metal tone, to some shrieking, and to clean. The drums of Morbid fit perfectly with the sound that is being accomplished here. It definitely adds dimension to the songs.

Overall, this is a very good album filled with manifold emotions. Fans of the depressive genre should check this out. It's really not like any others out there but I can understand that this is not for everyone. Some people usually expect aggressive guitars, acoustic interludes, piano, and other elements to make an album immaculate. How Will You Live Your Life Today? reaches that point in my opinion, however, only using the guitar tones and melodies as its atmosphere rather than relying on what everyone else is doing. Nonetheless, Hanging Garden delivers with this strong and emotional opus. Expect depression after listening to this.

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Review by Vyldr