LEBANON HANOVER - Asylum Lullabies

Lebanon Hanover are a generational phenomenon that exploded thanks to the success of “Gallowdance” (a noose-around-the-neck single with over forty million views) and a string of easily digestible slogans (sadness is rebellion being one of them).

Try asking a young goth who William Maybelline and Larissa Iceglass are: the answer will come quickly enough, especially since on a twenty-year-old's playlist you're more likely to find a Lebanon Hanover track than a song by Bauhaus, Siekiera or Modern Eon. Nothing wrong with that, to be clear, but how much are these two musicians actually worth?

It has to be said that “Why Not Just Be Solo” (2012) remains a solid darkwave work with strong minimal overtones, an album later followed by a string of releases that weren't always inspired, aside from a few excellent tracks scattered here and there (from “Kiss Me Until My Lips Fall Off” to “The Last Thing”). Now, though, five years on from the apocalyptic undertones of the decent but not essential “Sci-Fi Sky” (2020), Lebanon Hanover return with material that is in some ways more challenging and experimental. A borderline record made up of eight tracks whose lyrics draw inspiration from the dark labyrinths of mental illness.

Once again, William Maybelline's parallel work with the Qual project rightly stays in the background: we can taste it in the liquid atmospheres of “My Love” or in the synthetic web of “Waiting List”, given that the electronic approach found on “Asylum Lullabies” is of an altogether different substance.

“Pagan Ways” indeed veers into post-industrial noise, as do the delirious tribalism of the alienating “Torture Rack” and “I'm Doing This For You” (a sort of litany for the end of times). The result, while original, doesn't fully convince. These sensations (at times unresolved) return when the duo takes the acoustic route of “Frosty Life” or the martial path of the pitch-black “Parrots”. Far better is the pure darkwave stride of “Sleep”, a cold carpet that winds back on itself until it crushes the soul in an icy embrace.

Is that enough? Not quite, although this comeback still needs to be unpacked with due patience. After all, this is in some ways a courageous work, a mirror shattered into a thousand pieces, like the psyche of a mentally ill person perhaps destined never to heal.

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21/07/2025