Psychotic Gardening - Hymnosis

Doom death usually copies the melodramatic tones of Paradise Lost, Anathema and My Dying Bride, but these Canadian’s are a touch different. These are doom and death, there is a distinct different when you listen to this latest album all the way through. Punishing death metal cuts are mixed tracks that are very epic, low end and heavy and in some respects sound a little like Triptykon. A bit unhinged you may say, but I must say this is a great way to present such influences.


Having previously released material that mixes doom and black metal, Psychotic Gardening clearly have much more punch when they delve into more pure death metal. This becomes crystal clear with the opening track ‘Origin Of The Infection’. There is a massive classic US death metal tone but this also has a galloping Swedish undercurrent by the tempo alone not necessarily the guitar tone, but this should be confused with death ‘n’ roll, but elements do exist.


Vocally, Chuck Labossiere stands out by a country mile; the quality is cool flipping between classic death growls to something altogether more pungent. With this thought and chugging guitar work ‘Defile’ could easily be a Rogga Johansson/Grotesquery tune although there is greater acknowledgement of their influences with a cover of Death’s ‘Open Casket’, although you wouldn’t necessarily recognise it as being so, but it is a very cool version.


For the emotive doom element, head over to ‘Searing Cital’ as this trundles and defiles your speakers, in a pleasant sense of course, showing character and the ability to once again give the listener a wealth of diversity and bowel wretched nihilism which continues with ‘Garden Raiding’. As you may gather, my personal favourite and strongest element is the death metal ferocity, although I cannot discount the doom death, but its not that exciting by comparison personally, I really don’t like keyboards, but that’s just me.


You should really checkout this band and latest release, I am certainly going to try and get a hold of their earlier material as based on this effort I am intrigued how their music and influences occur and what they are and were capable of producing. The band name might suggest these are green fingered mentalists rather than eclectic artists with vision and cool insight; this is a very strong release its appealing and interesting on many levels are far from run of the mill.



  1. Origin Of The Infection  
  2. Defile  
  3. Re-Hybridized Strain  
  4. Mindfold 
  5. Genome Degradation 
  6. Searing Cital 
  7. Garden Raiding  
  8. Open Casket (cover - Death) 
  9. Journey To The Sun