Hanged Ghost - The Attraction of Oblivion (2013)

   Hanged Ghost debuted in 2011 by "Knowledge of the Occult", a rehearsal quality record. Their music showed kinda mixed influences, that's not the easiest thing to figure out for two reasons. 

   First of all because of their style pick, which is basically funeral doom. And the funeral doom they play is definitely not easy to go into. Extended themes during even more extended song lengths, monotonous, endless suffering in its most extreme form. At the other hand the poor quality is also not helping. The noisy heaviness based riffs doesn't prevail as they used to in funeral doom, and the sound is more relatable to black metal. Therefore by listening to the debut, it's difficult to decide if the sound was intentionally like that, or it just came from the rehearsal quality. Things are more clear on "The Attraction of Oblivion", since the sound was better, but kept the same tendency. Funeral doom's essential slow, down-pulling themes not necessarily making any specific distinguishing line between black and death metal features, especially if the selected sound is strongly atmospheric and echoing. So both could function next to each other unnoticed. On the side of the sound, occasionally some quite old school black metal themes showing up too, of course in slower version. To the more complete black metal influenced impression  the vocals are assisting too, when deep growling switches to higher toned cawing. And it happens quite frequently, therefore the blackened touch became one of the Hanged Ghost's main features. These characteristics working pretty well together to highlight desperate hopelessness, and able to easily bring up the most negative feelings from the listener. The album might be pretty enjoyable for the fans of funeral doom!