Hanging Doll – The Sacred & Profane

Review by Tosh Davies

Rocksector Records

Second album from Walsall band Hanging Doll is a pleasant, metal goth attack of magnificent proportions. Rocksector Records have really found the British answer to Evanescence, all be it a lot more stable in the line-up stakes and possibly better sounding.

It’s a little like a female-fronted Paradise Lost at times with its dark moody overtures shrouding its cloak of melancholy over the listener as on ‘Final Descent’.  However before getting to that stage, first track ‘From The Cradle To The Grave’ is quite an up-tempo affair with weighty guitars chugging away forcefully. Sally Holliday’s soaring vocals are truly magnificent throughout; not too warbled in the operatic sense but controlled and calculated, providing the listener with a haunting captivating experience. ‘Carnival Of Sin’ adds some metal gruff with its backing vocals and superb guitar solo which combine well with the piano interludes.

With most of the tracks along the six minute mark it certainly requires some of your hard pressed attention. The gothic overtures sway and engulf you and are sure not to feature in a Disney movie any time soon. It’s not all doom and gloom there are flurries of sunshine buried deep within the album.

Hanging Doll have impressed me with this release, not my usual choice of listening but I’m suitably converted to their haunting emphatic message. As they prove there are plenty of talented bands this side of the Atlantic that require your support. Unlike Evanescence, Hanging Doll actually put guitar solos within their songs; for me that certainly deserves some smarty points.

8 out of 10

• Hanging Doll’s website

Track Listing:

1. Cradle To The Grave
2. Carnival Of Sin
3. Dark Narcissus (The Forest)
4. Lacrimosa
5. Only In My Reveries
6. Immortal Beloved
7. Tincture
8. The Sacred & Profane
9. Flames Of Woe
10. The Final Descent
11. Bound In Servitude
12. The Inauspicious Host
13. A Question Of Faith