Somebody famously opined that Haken‘s Fauna somehow flew under the radar for many reviewers in 2023. And there may be some truth to this. Or is there?
After masterpieces like Virus that made it straight to the top of our 2020 Top 10 or sturdy records like The Mountain with their Cockroach King, it will be a difficult climb for any new piece to reach those lofty heights. And I daresay, these olde albums still resonate with the RMR crew to this day.
Also, Haken here were called out for being an abject djent machine and should thus be thrown into the dreaded oubliette. Like forever, without parole. And all of that is true in a way, but as prog goes, the band around Ross Jennings is still as fresh and varied as it gets. Now, add to that an important departure – Diego Tejeida back in ’21 – and an overly pretentious production with a few bad spots. And there you have it, Fauna continued to slip away from the RMR Review Desk’s limited attention span on far too many occasions, there were so many shiny objects around. So, suddenly, it was way too late for the record to make it anywhere near the 2023 list.
Tejeida got replaced by an old yet known value, Peter Jones. The man who left the band back in 2008 to complete his studies.1 And as per Jennings‘ recent musings, he had a big impact on this here new album. And it shows. I found the idea to assign one animal to every song an endearing idea but also a pretty genial one. But Haken didn’t quite stop there, they always added a human connotation to this crazed notion of enjoying one sub-theme per song. They do like to complicate their musical life over there in London on their cold island. But works for us, bring it on folks. The feistier the prog, the better for us.
The first four tracks – Taurus, Nightingale, The Alphabet of Me, and Sempiternal Beings – make for an extremely strong start with often excellent material. Those are – without the shred of a doubt – masterful tracks. All of them endowed with complex yet stunning song structures and refrains that bask in the vocal geekery generated by Jennings‘ elastic voice. Taurus with its powerful signature like the bull it depicts. Or is it the zodiac all of a sudden? We’re not quite sure. The playful Nightingale that could have been concocted in Caligula’s Horse‘s very own kitchen. Delicate, light, and plain good. Sempiternal Beings with Aurelia, the immortal jellyfish, that foists very human wisdom à la Ross Jennings upon us miserable mortals. This track truly rivals material that we found on Virus earlier this decade.2
When will we cease to convince ourselves, we’re sempiternal beings?
Sempiternal Beings | Haken, Fauna (2023)
Yet, Fauna also contains inconsistencies which made us repeatedly pull back from the record. After the aforementioned stellar start, the record suddenly slows down – and stutters onward on an uneven footing. Not that the tracks are bad, but – suddenly – they start to lack bite or get overly technical to the point of losing the audience some. Also, Haken started to noodle about the soundscape a bit too much, even if this is somehow inherent to Progressive Metal. And that renders tracks like Elephants Never Forget boring to the point of making us faint. Or – again – check out Lovebite that sounds like something from Train on a pseudo-prog outing, concocted at a time when they still had some fire in their bellies.
And then, like a solar flare brutally lashing the Fauna-sphere, Eyes of Ebony waltzes out of the morning’s fiery blaze with magnificent delicacy. This track truly is playful like Caligula’s Horse and sturdy as the aforementioned The Mountain. With a refrain that simply blasted us out to space, burnt us to a crisp, and made us chuckle at the same time. How can a white rhino knock on the doors of Valhalla? That’s usually reserved for Viking warriors to feast, fight, and whore forever. But then again, a rhino is a nasty, mean, and short-tempered warrior, too. And perhaps there is an animal section there.
Finally, Fauna contains some of the best but also the most inaccessible material Haken ever produced. This band still magnanimously dwells in the upper top tier of prog nirvana, no doubt. And this, despite the somewhat spotty playlist with those weird soft patches that destroyed an otherwise stellar track record.3 And this quirk finally led to this album slipping our grasp all the time in 2023. So, did it fly under the radar over at RMR? No, it simply didn’t get off the ground to even get on our vast detection screen over at HQ. The band produced great Progressive Metal this time – but for sure nothing for prog n00bs out there. And that should make the folks over at Haken think some.
Right?
Ed’s note: Also, check out the Blasts from the Past list for 2024. Juicy and old content awaits you there.
Record Rating: 8/10 | Label: Inside Out Music | Web: Official Band Site
Release Date: 3 March 2023