Garland introduced a vanishing criterion for a characteristic zero cohomology group of a locally finite and locally connected simplicial complex. The criterion is based on the spectral gaps of the graph Laplacians of the links of faces and has turned out to be effective in a wide range of examples. In this note we extend the approach to include a range of non-simplicial (co)chain complexes associated to combinatorial structures we call Garland posets and elaborate further on the case of cubical complexes.