Throughout my journey being a compassionate metalhead for so many years now, a lot of artists from the Pacific Northwest scene have really paid close attention and detail into making music that is extremely engaging, admirable and appreciative to every music form that’s coming from the community for generations to come. Hangman’s Park on the other hand, are a extreme metal project from South Bend, Washington that’s been around since 2017 and to summarize their sound is basically taking elements of thrash metal, death metal and melodic death metal but having these really cool time signatures making every instrumental contribute itself to have this exhilarating, catchy and melodically driven album that is apocalyptic, yet outrageously fun at the same time.
There’s moments on the record where I feel the band is heavily inspired by The Black Dahlia Murder, Cannibal Corpse and even The Devil Wears Prada for example in having these frantic, despairing and unique sound that takes these members into creating such wonderfully crafted musical abilities with such heavy emphasis on energy and quality. Just when you hear the tracks such as Altar Of Pigs, Trance, Dismal Nitch and Strife for example have these really cool lyrical themes that feel depressive, desperate and isolated in a sense where the members of Hangman’s Park really showcased themselves into creating multiple hybrids of combining multiple genres and ultimately created the most original and uniqueness records I’ve heard in quite sometime.
Even moments throughout the second half of Eleven I get a progressive, doom and traditional heavy metal styled arrangements almost if I were to detect some Black Sabbath, Rush, King Crimson and the jazzy almost Mr. Bungle inspired melodies does have amazing compositions as the vocals, guitars, bass, drums and production have such high accessibility to the point they all play such a important role to incorporate such atmosphere and energy-efficient vibes to really make sure you don’t leave on the edge of your seat. Eleven does take multiple listens to really digest the listener into a explorative, yet outrageously entertaining experience that fans of extreme music may find Eleven to be a fearless and compulsive album.
Overall Score: 8.0/10
Review by Jake Butler
