I get your point, even agree with it, but you generally don't really want too much of a good thing, either. I sprinkle salt on my food, I don't pour it on. The wackyness in Haken's music, like salt, can be too much for some people or just enough for others. And let's face it, Haken's wackyness is some pretty strong salt. Even I wasn't a fan of this band at all before The Mountain, mostly for this reason.
I have to say that at first the wacky parts did not go down too well with me, but after listening to it quite a lot it no longer sounds weird...
My suggestion for those who don't like Haken is to give them a few more tries. Today, or a month, or a year from now. When I first listened to Aquarius I was thoroughly unimpressed. When I listened to it the second time a year later I started liking it and with the third listen I became a bit obsessed. Surprisingly, pretty much the same happened with Visions: first listen, meh. After several listens: AMAZING! I have to admit this almost did not happen to me on The Mountain (though Falling Back to Earth and In Memoriam did take some listens to really click)
But hey, not everybody has to like them, though it sure would be nice if they did...
Anyway, yesterday I got to see them live for the first time in Das Rind, Rüsselsheim! I'm probably heavily biased, but it was seriously awesome. The band has a lot of chemistry and they all really look like they're having fun. Ross does all kind of crazy things while not singing and I was completely impressed by how great his singing was! It sounded just the same as in the albums with just a few cool variations added in for flavor! Raymond is absolutely insane on the drums, I seriously thought he was going to have a heart attack or something... It was also really cool that almost all of them helped with the vocal harmonies at one point or another (Oh, and unless I got it wrong it looked as if Diego was singing even when he was not on the microphone XD). It was also quite impressive to see Richard, Charlie and Tom playing: I knew their songs were complex, but I'm not enough of a musician to really know how hard it is until I see someone playing it live... There quite a few jokes (with puppets!) and a few "Goodbye, Tom" moments as well. After the show the band left the stage and mingled with the crowd, signing albums, LPs, taking picture, and generally being friendly and nice.
For those interested, here's the set-list as I remember it:
1. The Path Unbeaten (it was their coming-onto-the-stage song)
2. Atlas Stone
3. Eternal Rain
4. Shapeshifter
5. In Memoriam
6. Cockroach King
7. Drowning in the Flood
8. Diego's Keyboard Solo
9. As Death Embraces
10. Tom's Bass Solo
11. Pareidolia
12. Somebody
Encore: Visions (!!!)
I was a bit disappointed they didn't play Because It's There, but then again to really satisfy me they would have had to play all of their three albums...