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Haken - Fauna review



Reviewer:
7.8

214 users:
7.79
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.


Rating breakdown
Performance: 9
Songwriting: 7
Originality: 7
Production: 9





Written on 06.03.2023 by Hey chief let's talk why not


Comments

Comments: 14   Visited by: 208 users
07.03.2023 - 11:00
Rating: 5
Daniell
_爱情_
Elite
Your review is much much better than the album

To me this album sounds like basically all Haken albums:
1. It's messy and full of redundant, mismatched passages that water down the songs and sometimes make them borderline incomprehensible.
2. Contains too much flashy, annoying wankery that serves nothing.
3. Has mediocre singing and flat melodies.
4. Has an overwhelming number of odd time signatures. Sometimes (or most of the time) they sound jarring and forced. There are very few bands/drummers that can make odd meters work. Haken definitely isn't one of them.
5. Considering all of the above, Haken sounds soulless and mechanical. Not like songs that evoke feelings, but like machine-created hollow constructs.
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07.03.2023 - 11:09
Rating: 7
musclassia
Staff
Written by Daniell on 07.03.2023 at 11:00


5. Considering all of the above, Haken sounds soulless and mechanical. Not like songs that evoke feelings, but like machine-created hollow constructs.

See, this was a problem that I had with the last couple of albums; I actually found that this one was more prone to evoking feelings, particularly near the end, but was also prone to get in its own way and undermining the impact the band could have.

The rest of your points, I'm clearly more generally warm to Haken than you are, but I do harbor similar feelings to lesser extents, which is why I've lost my interest in Haken in a way that I've not really done so for other prog bands that emerged around the same time (Leprous, Caligula's Horse, Vola, etc)
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07.03.2023 - 12:34
SamuelYK
My first real encounter with Haken and after two listens I like it very much. I usually avoid prog just because of the predominant obnoxious singing in the genre and to counter the first comment, maybe I like it so much is because of the lack of vocal acrobatics of Leprous and its peers. This one is more Karnivool / Tesseract style which is more my taste.
P.S: I'm more into Katatonia, Neurotech, Ghost etc type of more "laidback" singing and to find something similar again in the prog reign is a blessing.
To each its own I guess. Will listen to it much more, thanks for the review
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07.03.2023 - 13:25
Rating: 8
MetalManic
The departure of keyboardist Diego Tejeida has also led to the departure of the immensity (for better or worse) of his instrumental contributions. With the [effectively] scaled back keyboard performance of Peter Jones, it feels as though the guitars have had their moment to shine. Performance wise, guitars:keyboard is more akin to that of Persefone. One can easily appreciate their duality/presence. This results in Fauna having a slight retro/origins feel, when compared to Haken's albums post Affinity to Virus.
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07.03.2023 - 13:35
Rating: 5
Daniell
_爱情_
Elite
Written by musclassia on 07.03.2023 at 11:09

The rest of your points, I'm clearly more generally warm to Haken than you are, but I do harbor similar feelings to lesser extents, which is why I've lost my interest in Haken in a way that I've not really done so for other prog bands that emerged around the same time (Leprous, Caligula's Horse, Vola, etc)

Since you mentioned these 3 bands...

I strongly dislike most of Leprous' albums, (with two exceptions, The Congregation and Malina, go figure). Solberg's constant excruciated wailing is simply unbearable most of the time, and it is the sole reason I almost never listen to Leprous. But at least the music there is good a lot of the time. It conveys a lot of emotion, and engages me more often than not. One could only imagine how good this band would be if the singing wasn't so insufferable.

Caligula's Horse is very middling and inoffensive. The music is appropriately complex and varied, but the singing is even flatter than Haken's. Overall, the band leaves me indifferent.

Vola - I listened to an album once, didn't like it, never looked back. Perhaps I should try again.
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07.03.2023 - 16:03
Rating: 5
Raddz
Written by Daniell on 07.03.2023 at 11:00

Your review is much much better than the album

To me this album sounds like basically all Haken albums:
1. It's messy and full of redundant, mismatched passages that water down the songs and sometimes make them borderline incomprehensible.
2. Contains too much flashy, annoying wankery that serves nothing.
3. Has mediocre singing and flat melodies.
4. Has an overwhelming number of odd time signatures. Sometimes (or most of the time) they sound jarring and forced. There are very few bands/drummers that can make odd meters work. Haken definitely isn't one of them.
5. Considering all of the above, Haken sounds soulless and mechanical. Not like songs that evoke feelings, but like machine-created hollow constructs.

You just described 95% of prog metal bands.
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08.03.2023 - 08:24
SamuelYK
Written by Raddz on 07.03.2023 at 16:03

Written by Daniell on 07.03.2023 at 11:00

Your review is much much better than the album

To me this album sounds like basically all Haken albums:
1. It's messy and full of redundant, mismatched passages that water down the songs and sometimes make them borderline incomprehensible.
2. Contains too much flashy, annoying wankery that serves nothing.
3. Has mediocre singing and flat melodies.
4. Has an overwhelming number of odd time signatures. Sometimes (or most of the time) they sound jarring and forced. There are very few bands/drummers that can make odd meters work. Haken definitely isn't one of them.
5. Considering all of the above, Haken sounds soulless and mechanical. Not like songs that evoke feelings, but like machine-created hollow constructs.

You just described 95% of prog metal bands.

actually, that's accurate as hell when you think about it
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08.03.2023 - 08:26
DarkWingedSoul
Agree with all, also find it hard to get a grip on the last haken albums ....
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08.03.2023 - 08:58
Rating: 5
Daniell
_爱情_
Elite
Written by SamuelYK on 08.03.2023 at 08:24

Written by Raddz on 07.03.2023 at 16:03

You just described 95% of prog metal bands.

actually, that's accurate as hell when you think about it

Well, I actually like quite a few prog bands, so I kind of know what I'm talking about
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08.03.2023 - 09:21
SamuelYK
Quote:
Quote:

Well, I actually like quite a few prog bands, so I kind of know what I'm talking about

yeah me too, but the things that don't click with me with prog bands is usually one of those paragraphs you described hehe, minus the vocals.
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08.03.2023 - 11:31
Rating: 6
24emd
Theory Snob
I agree with the above list entirely. Visions is one of my all-time favourite albums, but everything since has felt disjointed and random, with only a few good songs here and there.
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"Music? Well, it's just entertainment, folks!" - Devin Townsend

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14.03.2023 - 08:27
theFIST
Absolutely love the album artwork, just wish it were more intense music
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Written by Warman on 07.11.2007 at 22:39
Haha, that's like saying "compose your own Metal album and upload it here, instead of writing a review of an album". :lol:

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18.05.2023 - 03:52
Rating: 8
tintinb
Some of the songs are good. The chorus of lovebites is special. But even I was a bit surprised with the wankery at Elephants Never Forget. Totally unnecessary. But overall an album that I kind of enjoyed, I will say.
----
Leeches everywhere.
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05.02.2024 - 22:54
LordFezzington
Lost To Apathy
Agree with pretty much everything in this thread. An album of disjointed moments rather than songs - which probably makes "Lovebite" the best of the lot for its straightforwardness, ironically.
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