Well the album is out now, so now I can finally give my thoughts.
I feel that this album was a letdown. I was a massive fan of Vector for how tight it was, & how well-balanced the heaviness & melodic elements were, but I feel Virus is quite lacking in that department. It feels like every song is trying to be this massive heavy beast, & sadly it gives the album very little room to breathe. Vector was also very dense, but it still felt like it had a balance of catchy melodies & heavy riffs to make it feel like every second was giving me what I wanted. With Virus, the balance just isn't there in my opinion. I feel like there's not as much depth to anything as Haken is typically known for. There's too many sections where the sheer power of the music drowns everything out.
I think a big part of that can be attributed to the mix, which was the guitars, drums, & vocals at the forefront. & they are LOUD. The whole album is really. I've tried listening to Vector & Virus back-to-back & as soon as the Virus material started, I had to turn down the volume. The loudness war doesn't typically faze me personally, but the amount of compression on this album makes it an exhausting listen, & it especially highlights how few layers there are compared to Haken's other material. Maybe the loudness wouldn't have been as noticeable if it actually felt earned, but it really doesn't.
This works fine if you're just listening to a song on its own, because it has a kind of catharsis to it, but when that appeal wears off, my enjoyment as a whole goes down with it.
Take Invasion for example. On first listen, I hear that strong chorus with Ross's soaring vocals & I'm like "fuck yeah", but when I start to analyse the song's progression, the payoff to any of the song's buildups is always those vocals & the djent rhythms of the guitars. It never really goes beyond that "fuck yeah" moment into any kind of deeper appreciation. By the end of the song, I don't feel like I've just heard a piece of the album, I feel like I've just listened to a metal song without my enjoyment ever going beyond that. It works as a single, but not as a part of something greater.
Carousel is a step up from the first two singles, because I feel that it has a more interesting structure & even some interesting dynamics. There's an elephant in the room though, & that's that the song sounds like Tool... like a lot... Now, I like Tool. I like their sound, & I don't mind people taking inspiration from it. I'd be a hypocrite if I didn't, being a modern Dream Theater fan & all. I just think that the Tool influence on Carousel is not quite fitting for Haken, & it does stick out like a sore thumb. Once again, this isn't a bad song, but I think it works better on its own than as a part of something bigger.
Although I think the dynamics on Carousel are something to be praised, sometimes they do feel a bit jumpy too. You have this soft rhythm & then suddenly huge guitars dominating & Ross going "think of aaaaall the peeeeople". It feels less like a build & more like a collection of sections that just happen to be louder & softer. I actually think it works for this song, because it has quite an intricate structure, but in the rest of Virus, it doesn't work nearly as well.
Canary Yellow is possibly the worst example of this. Transitioning out of The Strain, it seems clear that the song is meant to be the more emotional counterpart to it, but the drums (although they're interesting rhythmically) start out absolutely massive in what's supposed to be a soft reflective moment. Then when the outro hits, the guitars are extremely loud, which makes a bit of sense because it's the climax of the song, but I don't think it builds up to it very well, ESPECIALLY to that extreme. Some more buildup would've been nice, but I have some doubts about whether the mix would have done it justice even if a more elaborate buildup was there. Compare this to Host, which balanced its soft & loud parts perfectly to give an emotional experience, & even in the climax of the song, didn't have the guitars drowning out the other layers that the song had built up. I think Virus was written to have Canary Yellow (& to a lesser extent, The Strain) as some breathing room, but the mix just doesn't do it any favours regarding subtlety.
& then we get to Messiah Complex. This absolute mess of a song starts positively enough, with arguably the best chorus on the album & some of the melodic elements of the band actually getting their chance to shine. However, the song quickly devolves into a disaster. It's like an endless chain of unfinished ideas that loosely connect, are damn-near impossible to follow rhythmically, are all loud as fuck, & never end. It feels like every three seconds of Messiah Complex is trying to outdo the previous three seconds in how proggy & heavy it is with very little care for tension & release. & how could I forget the REFERENCES. They come out of nowhere & have the subtlety of a brick. Maybe they make more sense in relation to the story (I know the story relates to the Cockroach King, which is reprised three times), but it further complicates this Frankenstein's Monster of random tiny parts that are all somehow fighting each other for dominance. It's a trainwreck, & the only time it returns to actually establishing a semblance of structure is in the final movement, which reprises both Cockroach King & Prosthetic, but actually recontextualises them to make it feel like a grand closing to this confused & unpleasant epic.
Fortunately, the album doesn't end there, & the album has the absolutely beautiful coda of Only Stars. It's only 2 minutes, & is quite a simple reprise of the Clear melody, but the atmosphere it builds with the binaural sound effects, haunting piano, & frail vocals makes this an incredibly immersive piece of music. You can just feel the emotion with everything that happens, & it's a shame that the album for the most part seems more focussed on being as heavy as possible over exploring the deep & layered musical ideas that Haken have done so well in the past.
TL;DR I didn't like it
5/10
Topic: Haken v. new single Nightingale (April 26) (Read 444288 times)
