Hanging Garden - Isle Of Bliss - review
Hanging Garden - Isle Of Bliss - review
Tracklist
01. To Outlive The Nine Ravens02. Eternal Trees Of Turquoise
03. Isle Of Bliss
04. To The Gates Of Hel
05. The Death Upon Our Shoulders
06. The Blights Nine
07. Arise, Black Sun
08. Her Waning Light
09. Beneath The Fallen Sky
A review by
tominator April 30, 2026
The argument that you could make in favour of Hanging Garden’s latest album is that it’s a fairly consistent one. Most notably in the performance, production, and atmosphere departments. The latter manages to convey darker undertones, a bit of melancholy, and a hint of despair at times. You know, the kind of things you’d expect and like to hear on gothic record.
Unfortunately, I can’t say that the sum of all these good elements really amount to something very memorable. To quote the band: “This time we decided to take a more conscious step towards a more bare-bones composition on the new songs, supporting the perhaps darker and maybe even more ferocious side of our music.” On paper this sounds like it could work and be interesting. However, the end result is an album that suffers from one major issue: songs are simply sounding too similar to each other. Like if you would make a cocktail with orange juice, but instead of adding other ingredients, you add another four types of differently branded orange juice to your cocktail. Technically speaking they are different ingredients, but I’m not so sure your cocktail would be very memorable.
Now, I know that might sound harsh, but these are honestly some of the hardest records to get through for me when I’m doing reviews (it’s partially the reason it took me so long to do this one). After several listens, it becomes a slog to get through the whole album. Listening to the songs separately alleviated that problem, but even then I don’t feel like any of the songs are really all that special.
There is one exception for me, though, and that’s “To The Gates Of Hel”. That one has a nice flow, and I really like the dual layered vocals in the chorus. They give a pleasant contrast with the harsher and darker vocals in the other sections of the song. Truthfully, as soon as I started to listen to songs individually, rather than listening through the record from start to finish, I started to appreciate this song more and more.
There’s something to be said for songs like “The Blights Nine” and “Beneath The Fallen Sky” as well, but everything they have to offer that’s worthwhile for me, I can already find in “To The Gates Of Hel”. It’s just that issue of songs sounding so similarly rearing up its head again.
So where are we at with this one? For all the negativity I have spouted in this review about it lacking variety, I also have to refer back to the beginning of my review. The atmosphere, production, and performances are very good, and I do think there is potential in the style they were trying on this album. As of right now, I feel like this is the kind of record that you would listen to maybe once or twice a year and be overall quite satisfied with, or listen to one or two songs every once in a while. However, if you want something more substantial, I’m afraid Isle Of Bliss isn’t going to cut it. Hopefully this can be the blueprint for something with a bit more staying power in the future.
Rating breakdown
| Performance: | 8 |
| Songwriting: | 6 |
| Originality: | 5 |
| Production: | 8 |
Comments
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My feelings are pretty much the same about the album. the tracks sound too similar. if one of them pops up in your playslit, that makes for good listening... but you can't listen to the whole album in one go without getting bored
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