Asylum Lullabies — Lebanon Hanover (CD)

Nearly five years after the release of ‘Sci-Fi Sky’, Lebanon Hanover has produced your favorite soundtrack for a visit in a psychiatry clinic: Asylum Lullabies. This is the evolution of an even colder, more caustic sound by a band that has dominated the Post Punk landscape for over a decade. Asylum Lullabies is a very heavy album about dealing with mental health struggles, a breakup and ongoing wars and the current horror in the world ultimately leaving one consumed with dread, fear and a constant feeling of being crushed. Everything falls apart at the same time. Yet, there are also songs about love and the protection it brings. Members Larissa Iceglass and William Maybeline wrote these songs in polarizing circumstances, but have produced a cohesive album with Asylum Lullabies. Pagan Ways opens the album with William Maybeline’s whispers over massive guitars, evoking Eastern ritualism, setting the tone for a somber journey, evoking a lonely place of forest and snake pits. This is the next phase promised with ‘Sci-Fi Sky’s’ closing incantation 'Come Kali Come'. Sleep is the promised lullaby to to keep you on the edge of wakefulness and slumber, unsure of which direction to turn. Larissa Iceglass guides you in circles with quivering whispers. Torture Rack picks up the Cocteau Twins sound of of the 2023 Lebanon Hanover single 'Kyiv' to the theme of a tortuous love. Frosty Life begins as another lullaby with Maybeline’s familiar vocals over sparse guitar and percussion, but it breaks into a sonorous wave. Waiting List brings the danceable pulse that fans of Lebanon Hanover fans have come to expect. The influences of early EBM tracks hide below the surface in a song that builds. Maybeline’s vocal in My Love echo with John Balance’s ghost, a perfect match for revival synths. The opening notes of I’m Doing This For You will feel the most familiar to long time fans, but these guitars and vocals are heavier and darker flirting between weighty power and expectant yearing. Parrots feels like an ode to Coil, the masters of dark experimental. “People have parrots and I have you. Repeating the words I say in the most gorgeous way.” With Iceglass and Maybeline both contributing vocals, the album closes with a percussion driven descent into darkness, into sleep.