Emerging out of the vibrant roster of artists from Transcending Obscurity Records is the second full-length studio outing from New York’s one man Progressive Death Metal outfit Hanging Garden. Two years have elapsed since the unveiling of the artist’s independently released debut ‘The God That Made Them Bow’. It was an album that showcased this Brutal Proggy entity as one with a penchant for assaulting its listeners with a vast glutinous gamut of sprawling polyrhythmic indulgences and seriously thick guitar tones. On this new release, which is entitled ‘Dream Death’ sole musician Dylan Cruz stretches his writing ambitions to new heights whilst being bolstered by the stronger production qualities granted by the artist’s new record label.
The initial track is titled ‘Arete’ which immediately places you within an audible whirlpool of complex controlled melodicism and where Cruz’ vocals are frequently reminiscent of Dan Swanö’s tone on many an Edge of Sanity release. The enveloping and immersive production is a mile ahead in terms of quality from the debut, with an improved sheen of natural sounding clarity that is essential for a track as busy as it is. I enjoy the various approaches to rhythm exercises on the track and the zombified vocals that appear in the song’s final third add to the invigorated emotional intensity of this cut. ‘Ondine’ plays next and this concoction is even busier than its predecessor with sub machine gun speed percussion and guitars that whip out through the mix like rolling components of an intricate machine. I will admit, whilst I do enjoy this song, the all-out nature of the performances from every instrument here can be a little too disorienting for my personal liking, even with a fair number of replays to familiarise myself with it. That said, I find an amount of necessary respite in the comparatively easier to grasp composition of ‘Dreamwoven’. The track still features more than its fair share of head-spinning acrobatics, but the song is grounded upon a slightly more rigid rhythmic spine.
‘Endymion’ brings with it plenty of emotive power-chordal expressiveness and pleasant interplay between the guitars and highly technical drum performance. Although I find that this track exposes one particular issue that I have with the record’s mixing, there is an unflattering amount of compression applied to the cymbal sounds. This aspect of the percussion frequently sounds screechy, shrill and tinny rather than adding the rich higher frequency cascading crashes that the impressive musicianship here deserves. Beyond this track, the remaining songs present more hyperactive bombardments of ever changing riff-craft. I find the overall range of melodic ideas here to be fairly consistent in their tone, which does cause the listening experience to become somewhat one-dimensional by the time the album draws to a close. I find that the final track ‘Suffering Radiant Memories’, offers some brighter aesthetics and soaring guitar solos, but compositionally doesn’t deliver a sense of finality to the grandiose statement that I feel this album is trying to display.
‘Dream Death’ is a definite improvement upon the first Hanging Garden album and it showcases the artist’s ambitious love of shape-shifting technical indulgence. It demonstrates a clearer sense of identity as a musical endeavour, but there is room for improvement when it comes to the stiffness and compression applied to the instrumentation. Whilst I do appreciate the sheer number of differing instrumental ideas across the record, the overall busyness of the songs can seem somewhat muddy, chaotic and a little bit sloppy, and this is only made more unflattering when paired with the record’s production weaknesses.
