
Hmm. 2024 turned dark and daemonic to the point that the RMR top 10 (almost) reached the glowing bottom of the occult pit. Now, early views of records on offer in 2025 seem to show a propensity toward the avantgarde. Stuffed with material that’s mighty difficult to classify and review. A redefinition of the term out-of-the-box if there ever was one.
And sure enough, an enigma just made a splash in our sumpy underworld of the review pipe. Haven is the name and they peddle their debut piece Causes. Yet another band with the urge for unconstrained metal music making. Yet another tortuous road for RMR to explore.
Where to begin? First off, the disk had the annoying quality of gluing itself to our mutual skulls for long stretches of the way. And I reckon, this is a good thing. The band indeed displays a knack for powerfully projecting raw emotion and – trve metal power right from the start. It is this mix of Alternative, Progressive, Post Metal, and – indeed – Post Punk pulling this roadshow forward. Plus, you get a pretty dramatic and ever-present injection of ‘core-ish influences in one serving. All of this comes garnished with remnants of Black and Death Metal (Causes, Leash) and some hidden and somewhat gothic melancholy. In a way, Haven here got to a level of proficiency in power prog that Todtgelichter never quite achieved. But – the band also availed themselves of a few slices of the late Aeons playbook. Yet another positive right here.
The guitars fit right into it with powerful riffs, chugs, and breakdowns swishing somewhat effortlessly in between styles. Sometimes silky and soft, and sometimes throwing not only the kitchen sink but the whole kitchen at you. Now, the drum work is right where it is supposed to be. And that is in support of the rest of the gang. A welcome change from many often orc-like and blast-beat-ridden metal pieces.
But all that heavy lifting with almost demonically possessed guitar mastery and thunderous drum work is only one side of the coin. Causes‘ true driving force is the vocal performance of one Norman Siegel.1 You’ll get slices of ominous whispers, croons, and monologues, over rasps, snarls, odd Hardcore howls, and silky clears. But the band won’t just leave it at that. There’s variety, too, with occasional polyphonic experiments going on in all that overly complex hullaballoo. And on rare occasions, all that often abject brutality is neatly broken up by some female interludes by guest singer Hannah Zieziula (Idol, for instance).
Now, all that multi-layering, hollering about the soundscape, and those rapid-fire switches between styles and moods led to pretty severe complexity. In other words, the densely written tracks leave no room to breathe and no time for the listener to take it all in at once. The band obviously tried to lighten the load with the injection of some ambients. But the brute-force intensity scrunched this shut nonetheless. To put it differently, keeping the airtime at some 38 minutes is a good thing. But if this comes at the loss of (some) accessibility, then your fan crowd might not grow as expected.
Ultimately, Causes first sold itself to this crew with its dogged insistence on remaining out of the mainstream. And by that definition, I mean metal pieces firmly attached to one or two genres but still way out of the sugary realms of metal o’ the light. In other words, Haven remains so far underground that you may have to use one of those ancient anti-aircraft searchlights to find them.
And that led to a jambalaya of rough-hewn, scratchy, and often deliciously vile rock and metal, running on fumes of often bitterly honest and brutal feelz. And this goes hand-in-hand with the powerful chug-laden guitars, drums on the warpath, and sometimes ethereal ambients and atmospherics. So, together with the pretty outstanding vocal performance – both male and female – they got themselves a juicy miasma of rock and metal that is as razor-sharp as it is heavily reflective at times. And maybe a bit too reflective at times.
Recommended.
Record Rating: 7/10 | Label: Argonauta Records | Web: Official Band Site
Release Date: 24 January 2024
- A non-entity in rock and metal, it seems. – Ed.-↩