Genre : Progressive metal
Released : March 3rd, 2023
Label : Inside Out Music
FFO : Dream Theater, Caligula's Horse, Native Construct, Soen
On their seventh album, the well-established UK modern progressive metal driving force Haken depart from futuristic themes and sci-fi concepts to instead present listeners with an entire ecosystem of tracks each representing an animal along with the human traits associated to said animal, as well as what these animals may personally represent to the band members.
The overall musical style of the album puts much more of an emphasis on accessible melody, moving away from the high energy, aggressive djent stylings of "Vector" and "Virus" in favour of a mellower approach to progressive metal that underlines the "catchiness" factor of the songwriting while loosing none of Haken's fondness for prog eccentricities.
Only this time it feels more condensed and reigned-in, allowing lengthier tracks such as "Elephants Never Forget" to extend beyond the ten minute mark and make every second of music feel necessary.
Haken's penchant for writing lengthy, sprawling progressive epics is still there, but "Fauna" sees their songwriting being tightened up and most of the time, to greater effect.
Within the span of an hour, Haken demonstrate that despite sounding less aggressive, they certainly still have enough bite on tracks like "Taurus" and "Beneath the White Rainbow", a soft spot for 80's nostalgic earworms in the form of "Lovebite" (which would definitely be deserving of radio play), have lost nothing of their prog metal quirks and tricks but are also able to display emotional depth and vulnerability, most notably with the moving album closer "Eyes of Ebony"; both a genuinely touching homage and a clever metaphor.
2023 has certainly been a great year for progressive metal so far, with both household names of the genre and more underground acts old and new putting out standout releases, with even more looming on the horizon still (looking at you Tesseract), and "Fauna" undoubtedly deserves its spot among them.
Haken official website : https://hakenmusic.com/
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