I just went through my first listen.
First impressions:
- I don't think this album will ever get close to topping The Mountain or Affinity, which are for me two of the most definitive and quintessential progressive albums of the decade (and the 2000s so far), but I don't mind that. This album is super different to anything they had done up to this point and that's good.
- The musicianship is, as always, incredible. It's impressive how tight they've become. They somehow manage to take djent and extreme progressive metal riffing and make it somewhat melodic and easy to grasp. Somewhat.
- That being said, this album for me is missing some awesome themes and motifs. Both The Mountain and Affinity had some incredible musical motifs and themes tying up the heaviness and the proginess quite nicely, but I didn't feel that in this record. Veil has a pretty awesome theme, but that's about it. Some vocal melodies feel somewhat disjointed and forced and I don't see myself right now singing along to the tunes because it's gonna take me some time to actually digest and learn the melodies; but that's fine, though. In my book, Haken has always had weird and not-so-easily-digestable vocal melodies and they've always managed to stick in my brain at some point. Either way, I was not as excited by the end of this album as I was a couple of years ago with Affinity, for example. That record was intense as hell, but I remember feeling so satisfied by the end even if I couldn't remember a single note of it. I hope this one is a grower in that regard.
- I think my favorite track is Veil so far, and my least favorite is Nil By Mouth. True, the instrumental is pretty impressive and something that's technically light years above most things rock bands do nowadays, but it didn't grab my attention so much as, for example, a Dance of Eternity does. I think they went way too deep into the djent-y realm with this track (and most of the rest as well) and I'm not the biggest fan of that style except for a few albums and bands. To me, that track felt like a bunch of ideas thrown in at once into a song without having a memorable musical resource making everything tie up nicely. I may be wrong, though. I hope the track grows on me because it's very impressive to say the least.
- Production and mixing were awesome. Dream Theater should take a note or two on how Haken are doing their records, because I feel they are sonically light years ahead their last couple efforts. Ironic, given DT has probably twice or more the budget Haken has to create a record.
I know that this album has some mind blowing stuff in it, but it just failed to grab me with the same intensity the past couple Haken albums did. I will spin it a couple more times to see what happens. Either way, I'm really looking forward to the tour (they're coming to Mexico FYEAH) as I can imagine that the new songs will be extremely impressive to watch live.
Topic: Haken v. new single Nightingale (April 26) (Read 444255 times)
