When it comes to the musicality of HANGING GARDEN, words are only second choice. At least the words that try to describe the songs of this Finnish band and their overall artistic aesthetic. The group’s approach to their art is based on emotion. Everything revolves around authenticity, honesty and unreserved openness. All this characterizes “Skeleton Lake”, whose progression is often implicit and whose direction of effect is sometimes suggestive. There is no right or wrong here.


The connection to the seventh album of the Finns presents itself inevitably. Although the playing of HANGING GARDEN tends to be gloomy and melancholic, from to time, the songs also seem optimistic or even euphoric. Since Riikka Hatakka joined the band as a permanent vocalist on “Into That Good Night” (2019), the musical picture has partially brightened and, additionally, the sound cosmos of the Finns has broadened noticeably. The resulting impressions seem manifold and even more emotional.


But “Skeleton Lake” is, of course, also a mirror of the circumstances of its creation, as HANGING GARDEN reveal: “This trying year has seemed like an endless winter, friends and strangers huddled within their abodes, near their hearths, waiting for spring to come. At the same time, the cold north has been colder than in many years, the lightless time of Kaamos relentlessly gnawing at our spirits. As spring begins to show, little by little, the winter sun reflecting its pale intensity through the vast fields of snow, HANGING GARDEN’s seventh album begins to emerge. Being forged in the searing cold and bleak isolation, “Skeleton Lake” is at times somber and hopeless, a crushing pressure in the freezing depths, and at times fervorous, basking in the splendor of a late winter’s sun. In the darkness, we are cold and afraid. Still, not all is lost.”