Hanging Doll - Reason & Madness [Album]

Once Bitten Music

June 12, 2009, 08:51 AM

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The Hanging Doll's album Reason & Madness had to be tackled with a deep breath, a slug of bourbon and a great show of bravado. The friend in the car with me the first time this album was put on defined the experience in one fine sentence: Yip, that pretty much sums it up.

It's not that the music is bad. In fact, the compilation of the album and sheer competency with which the Hanging Doll musicians wield their instruments is noteworthy. Lead singer Sally Holliday has a truly beautiful voice, which sounds much like Amy Lee's more wicked sister on a weekend away playing with the dark arts. It is power metal with an orchestral flavour at its best, however, the images invoked and emotion on display are just a bit too much.

The songs are heart wrenching and the colours are painted with blood, pain and angst (as dictated by the genre), and this quintet from Birmingham are the toast of the orchestral Goth rock town. But left alone in a room with this album, the merits would fade away and insanity would quickly follow. Perhaps that is what they are after. Their album art would certainly lead you to believe so.

Throughout Reason & Madness, Hanging Doll build up to an impressive number of crescendos. Holliday never misses a note, which is alarming seeings though she spends a great deal of time hovering in a stratosphere that is just one key below a hound's mating call. She can take it high and she is happy to keep it there. Contrasted against the gruff vocals of guitarist Daniel Leddy it works really well, for a while.

The subtle nuances of Reason & Madness are obviously lost on me and I imagine an album like this is the holy grail for a small but distinct group of fans (among which stand the living dead and Twilight cast). But, after the first three takes it all just gets a bit monotonous and the glorious orchestra of the dark arts looks more like a one trick pony. No boundaries are really challenged and they remain very Lacuna Coil-ish in the their overall sound.

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