Band:	Haken
Album:	Fauna
Style:	Progressive metal
Release date:	March 03, 2023
A review by:	musclassia

01. Taurus
02. Nightingale
03. The Alphabet Of Me
04. Sempiternal Beings
05. Beneath The White Rainbow
06. Island In The Clouds
07. Lovebite
08. Elephants Never Forget
09. Eyes Of Ebony
10. The Last Lullaby [Japanese bonus]

Fauna signals a lyrical departure for Haken; their first album without an overarching story, it’s comprised of unconnected songs sharing a theme of animal-human behavioural parallels. Considering their previous multi-album concept arc resulted in them releasing an album called Virus during a global pandemic and having its release disrupted by said pandemic, one can understand why they may not have wanted to give fate a chance to be tempted this time around.

Given how much certain metal genres are overpopulated by up-and-coming acts that are heavily derivative of the sound that first popularized the genre (think OSDM or Big Four-style thrash), it’s curious that Haken have stood out among the big emerging names in prog-metal across the past decade in being relatively classic-sounding in their approach. It’s a point I already made in my review of Virus, and that record did indulge in certain Dream Theaterisms that tempered my appreciation of it. To be entirely truthful, Haken are a band that I’ve found myself engaging with less and less across the dozen years since I first encountered them, and Virus and its companion piece Vector definitely played a part in that; with a fresh approach (and a fresh keyboardist, with original keyman Peter Jones returning after nearly 15 years to replace Diego Tejeida), Fauna takes some steps towards reversing that trajectory.

Probably my biggest gripe with Virus was the ‘hard-hitting’ yet flat-sounding opening track, “Prosthetic”. This new album does open with one of its heaviest cuts as well, but this time, it’s in a different form. While “Prosthetic” felt like Haken channeling the ‘Dream Theater-goes-angry’ approach, the synths and quasi-djent riffing on “Taurus” remind me more of someone like Vola, particularly with how stripped-back and subdued the verses are. It’s a very different approach, and arguably a more modern-sounding one, and it gets Fauna off to a solid start. Other tracks on the album that feel more closely tied to the current prog scene include “Sempiternal Beings”, a song that places more emphasis on groove, rhythmic complexity and atmosphere than pure virtuosic technicality, and the relatively mellow “Island In The Clouds”.

There are still classic Haken tracks here, however, most notably “Nightingale”, which has “Coackroach King”-style group vocals, brash synths and elaborate soloing midway through. The vocals of Haken have always been a notable feature, for better or worse; Ross Jennings has a voice that, again drawing comparison to Dream Theater, has a similar capacity to divide to James LaBrie. I’m not the biggest fan; a few of my least favourite moments on Fauna do come courtesy of the vocals, but even though I don’t love the enunciation, there are some very solid vocal passages and hooks, such as in “Taurus” and the emotional closing track “Eyes Of Ebony”. One song in which I do feel they don’t work all that great is Fauna’s experimental effort, “The Alphabet Of Me”.

A song that could well be the springboard for Haken to make a Leprous-style direction change, “The Alphabet Of Me” does have proggisms later on, but the opening is far closer to R&B and pop, between the synths, the glitching rhythms, and the vocal phrasing. However, of all the moments on Fauna, I do think the verse of this song is the one that suits Jennings’ voice the least; the fast-paced almost rap-style delivery is nails on chalkboard. “The Alphabet Of Me” in general is likely to be the most divisive song on the record; I personally don’t like it at all, but I can at least respect the boldness and passion to dabble with influences outside of metal. What I find more frustrating are the occasional Hakenisms that permeate the album, those overly indulgent or wacky passages; the relatively gnarly “Beneath The White Rainbow” has some cool riffs, but there’s times when the technicality just becomes an exercise in showing off rather than something enjoyable to listen to, while “Sempiternal Beings” goes a tad overboard in the guitar shredding considering the tone of most of the song.

The most egregious example of such moments for me, however, comes in the album’s 11-minute “Elephants Never Forget”; after a fairly patient and evocative tone-setting introductory minute, the song just goes into a mess of quirky funky instrumentation and vocals that jump all over the place. It’s such an irritating moment, and it’s unfortunate, because “Elephants Never Forget” has some of the best material Haken have written since at least Affinity; the central vocal refrain in this song is simple but incredibly effective, and while there are instrumental excesses in the song, there’s some great solos, riffs and passages, such as a chugging bit about two-thirds in that has real Between The Buried And Me energy. Even with the aforementioned moment that I hate, it’s probably the standout song on the album, but it could be that much better if they’d not thrown in such an ill-fitting repeated section. While it doesn’t have perhaps the same peaks, closing song “Eyes Of Ebony” is close to “Elephants Never Forget” in quality, and never undermines its central tone with weird tangents.

On the topic of tone, the tone of this review might be a bit hard to read, but I do like this album a pretty decent amount overall; it has more moments that genuinely draw me in than the last 2 records, and fewer moments that test my patience, even taking into account "The Alphabet Of Me". I don’t think it’s at the level of Affinity, but my own reservations notwithstanding, it is a very respectable addition to the Haken discography.