Some associations juste make sense: Hangman's Chair and DOOL on the same bill is both a dream and an obvious one. Both bands have an unrivalled mastery of the chiaroscuro, the gut-punching without technical flourish, the big melancholic rock that hits straight to the soul. We told you how, during DOOL's last visit to Paris in 2022, the “Hangmen” attended the Dutch band's concert (remember).
DOOL
The first thing you notice is how DOOL seem to have grown in popularity since their Summerland tour. Between the success of their album The Shape of Fluidity and a number of festival appearances last summer, the Dutch band have a growing cult following them. The second thing that strikes us, as usual, is the energy they put into it: bassist J.B. Van Der Wal, soaking wet from the first seconds, strikes his strings with the rage of a man possessed, and Raven Van Dorst's charisma radiates, their powerful voice resonating in the shell of the Trabendo. It's easy to be intimidated by their authoritarian looks and their anger... which are immediately defused by a warm smile and several thanks.
Although DOOL seem to have found a new audience with The Shape of Fluidity, played almost in its entirety this evening, we can't help but find their slightly more ‘complex’ approach, with its marked post-rock and progressive influences, less immediate. While the album is perhaps their most accomplished and homogeneous, and remains an enthralling work, it does not necessarily provoke the same monomaniacal addiction, and the concert, inhabited and intense, does not have the same twilight and romantic flavour as the sublime Summerland tour. Still, the tempestuous poetry of the title track and the creeping shadows of The Hand of Creation and House of a Thousand Dreams take us on board.
In its wanderings, DOOL mutate, evolve, grow, try, but, whatever happens, never stagnate, and that's all to the good. Still, we're delighted to hear the raging refrains of Wolf Moon again, and above all The Alpha, back in the setlist with its restrained rumbling menace and dizzying light/dark contrasts. As tradition demands, after their magnificent, heavy cover of Killing Joke's Love Like Blood, DOOL finish with the song that started it all, Oweynagat, and its visceral crescendo as the musicians sweat out their last drops. Once again, DOOL poured their heart and soul into every moment of their set. What was still a well-kept secret in France seems to have finally found its audience. It's about time: we've been telling you what an incredible project it is! What more could you want? Well, that this moment never ends and that the band continue to go through their discography, even if it means playing Dust & Shadow and Vantablack over and over again, which we sorely miss, but that's the beauty of life: you have to mourn all those things from the past... Until we meet again, perhaps?
HANGMAN'S CHAIR
he more you go to see Hangman's Chair live, the more obsessed you become with Hangman's Chair. That's the rule. Their patterns of heart-rending spleen and asphyxiating heaviness are irresistible. Their music isn't a display of technical skill or excessive embellishment: there are no 150 chords, no frenzied percussion demonstrations. Every thump on the drums, every wail plucked from the strings, seems to be extracted with all the rage possible, as if the musicians were searching deep inside themselves for the slightest sound to throw at us: incarnate, cathartic, as powerful as a wrecking ball.
Tonight, the band don't dawdle and string together their most famous tracks in the first part of the concert, a succession of unstoppable hymns to despair, from Cold & Distant to that absolute hit of sadness that is Naive, with of course in between the misty layers of An Ode to Breakdown or the sentence Dripping Low. Their unique blend of sticky Alice in Chains-style grunge, doom and cold wave, with monumental reverb full of spectres and concrete blocks, is to die for.
But Hangman's Chair are also four stalwarts who, far from appearing downcast on stage, put on a great show. Although Cédric, as usual, remains on one side of the stage, an unusual position for a singer, he is also more communicative, less self-effacing, as if he were hiding less. But he leaves the spotlight to his colleagues Julien and Clément, a bass-guitar duo as expressive as they are engaging. These two, who alternate between nonchalance, warrior spirit and a touch of show-off, know how to set the mood like no-one else. They're in perfect harmony with their audience, chatting away as their bodies scream out the sincerity with which they embody their music. And then behind the trio, there's Mehdi, who leads the way: with Hangman's Chair, the drums are central, and it's the beating heart that hit us straight in the stomach.
As the set progressed, the new songs arrived. The Worst is Yet to Come, a catchier-than-usual track, comes as a surprise after an electro/industrial interlude, Kowloon Lights is played second-to-last and sounds like a new promise of things to come... but above all, THE moment we've been waiting for, when Raven Van Dorst returns to the stage for 2 A.M. Thoughts, a dream collaboration of monumental heaviness. It's enough to make you dream of a side-project, or even an EP (but then again, we're already hoping to hear the incredible split between Hangman's Chair and Regarde les Hommes Tomber again one day)... One of the best bill of the year? Without a doubt. You'll come away both shrivelled and exhilarated, with stars in your eyes and black holes in your stomach. Too good.
