I listened to the album this morning, and I have to say that this is probably my least favorite Haken album for sure. It's not a bad album per se--it is Haken after all--but it doesn't really live up to the quality established in previous albums. Still better than half the prog I hear now tho.
Ranking after first listen:
1. Clear
2. Host
3. The Good Doctor
4. Puzzle Box
5. A Cell Divides
6. Nil by Mouth
7. Veil
The album sounds kind of one-note to me at times, honestly. It feels like the metal dial was left at 8 for most of this album, which doesn't give a whole lot of contrast with timbre or dynamics. Songs kind of blended together sometimes because of this too.
I appreciated what they did with the reoccurring themes in the album, especially since they actually developed and varied those themes a bit instead of just being like "yo remember that theme from the beginning? Here it is completely unchanged out of nowhere". Haken's been pretty good about that on the last three albums. Kind of wish they kept some of that thematic development inside the actual songs themselves tho. It seems like they try to introduce too many new ideas for their own good at times, which creates a lot of overall song flow issues. Hearing the chopped up version of the riff from Puzzle Box in Nil by Mouth was one of the highlights of the album tho.
Veil is just a hot mess. Nothing about this song works. It feels like they just glued two or three different songs together without regards to whether they flowed together or not. The switch from the heavy as frick first half to the atmospheric middle section is literally the most jarring thing I've heard in a Haken song. And it's not the good early/middle Opeth kind of jarring either. I thought it was another song that started. The song just drags on for the last 5 minutes, and I literally found myself checking to see if it was still going half the time. Easily their worst song. Easily.
Nil by Mouth is...okay. It has its moments (like that riff reprise I mentioned earlier), but man it's just got too much going on. Definitely didn't need those solos. Also kind of felt like an instrumental of a song with vocals half the time. I don't think it's necessarily tuneful enough on its own to work as a stand-alone instrumental. Basically, it's Haken's Enigma Machine. The whole album feels like their DT12 honest.
Clear is definitely the best song on the album, hand's down. It's short, sweet, and to the point. Doesn't meander, has a good tune, and maintains enough interest in spite of (or maybe because of) its short length. Hearing that nice classical functional harmony was SUCH a welcome surprise for me too. This is definitely near Top 10 Haken for me.
The Good Doctor and Puzzle Box are good. They may just have the advantage of being near the beginning of the album so you hear them while the sound is fresh. tGD is definitely the better of the two. Definitely the right choices for singles imo.
I'd comment on A Cell Divides, but honestly it's not that memorable. I've heard it 3 times now and I can't tell you anything about it besides it being vaguely heavyish and 7 minutesish. It's not bad, but it's just not great. It's like that SCP thing that you forget about when you're not looking at it.
Host is great. A nice breath of fresh air and one of the few breaks from non-stop metal in the album. Has some internal contrast too, which makes it even more interesting. Definitely one of my favorites.
Overall: it's okay. Doesn't live up to their last couple of albums. Sits at the bottom of Haken album rankings for me (along with Aquarius and Restoration), and would be middle of the road for my prog album rankings.
While I think the short run time would allow for the entire album to be played live, I don't think they'll do that. I think they'll do half or more.... they've got to reherse this stuff right? They're humans like the rest of us, aren't they?
But this is the material they'd have to rehearse the least. It's fresh and they've no doubt heard the whole thing a gazillion times in the last 2 months.
Maybe, but playing something live is super different from playing something in a studio setting. Everything's usually broken up in the studio, so they'd have to make sure that all the different sections are connected and probably review or relearn a lot of sections that they haven't touched for months or weeks.