Band: Haken
Release: The Mountain (Album)
Release Date: 2nd September 2013
Prog-rock records are always a tricky thing to get right. Too much experimentation and you end up with a blurring, eccentric mix of music. Done right, it can be a beautiful, cohesive flow of genre-busting tracks that create a synthesis of emotion and really portray the artist’s vision.
‘The Mountains‘ is an ambitious piece of work from London six piece Haken (pronounced like ‘bacon’). Its a slow build, with the classical introduction to ‘The Path‘, before heading into a more theatrical tone. ‘Atlas Stone‘ has some impressive vocal layering, whilst ‘Cockroach King‘ brings in a sci-fi feel with weird sound effects and robotic voices. The lyrics are, quite frankly, bizarre. In particular, the track’s ending, which would sound quite at home at a medieval fayre.
Although as a whole, the songs manage to fit well together, which is no mean feat considering the variety of genres on display here; its almost hard to distinguish the end of one piece and the start of another. The track lengths vary from a brief 2:47 to the extortionate ‘Falling Back To Earth‘, at an eye-watering twelve minutes long. You may find yourself wondering where the time went after listening to the album in its entirety.
The band clearly know their way around the prog-rock music scene, with members previously of To-Mera and Linear Sphere, which shows through with the high level of technical detail attached to the recording. In terms of musical quality, there’s very little to fault, its a well-produced, well-thought out record which does the group proud. Issues of pacing arise though, with the fairly monotonous ‘As Death Embraces’ preceding the much-livelier ‘Pareidolia‘. Its an unexpected jump that could have used more of a build, or at least a better placing on the record.
Overall, its going to be one for the prog-rock enthusiasts to pass judgement, but there should be enough here for them to appreciate at least.
7/10
Reviewer: Natalie Gardiner
