A solid lineup, a nice venue and the promotion of a confusing album: “Fauna“. First meeting with Haken, the most crazy prog band of the moment … Technical orgy or pure metalhead fun ?
BOOM !
The evening starts strong with the New Yorkers of Cryptodira. No downtime for our metal friends, the band starts early but in force with a powerful bass sound and a rare prog art. It screams, it pulses and it’s all good. It’s nice to find a band that is so technical and violent and yet doesn’t take themselves too seriously. A very nice surprise then, for a band that we had never heard before but that we will see again very soon. A short set but enough to present in beauty this project that knew nothing about it.
Setlist: Dante’s Inspiration, Ontology of Pain, The Blame for Being Alive, Hyperwealth, Something Other Than Sacrifice
The old-timers are there
Here comes Between The Buried And Me. Big name of this scene and active for a long time, the band was expected to prepare us at best for Haken. With a rather electronic sound, the beginning of the concert is rather scrambled feels very dull… Quickly the public is a bit lost for a concert which must be rather square to be able to benefit fully from the style.It will take a few songs for the pill to pass and for the band to reveal its power, especially on the track “Famine Wolf“, which will awaken some moshpits, light of course. Combining cerebral music and efficiency, we are happy to see this emblematic band again tonight, despite a difficult beginning. With a setlist heavily weighted towards their 2015 album “Coma Ecliptic“, one would probably be inclined to say that it would be nice to now offer something new for the fans.
Setlist: Extremophile, Revolution in Limbo, Fix the Error, Never Seen/Future Shock , Dim Ignitio, Famine Wolf, Bad Habits,The Future Is Behind Us ,Voice of Trespass
Fun is coming
And there without transition, we find ourselves with “Who Let the Dogs Out“. Why is that? We will never know… Does bad taste have a charm? Definitely. Under their Hawaiian shirts and their jungle background, the band Haken arrives all smiles on a stage that it will dominate throughout a set strong in emotions and virtuosity. The transition is however successful with “Prosthetic“. The drums are beating, the lights are pushing to epilepsy and the crowd is cheering for this so efficient track from their 2020 album, “Virus“. By the way, remember the theme of this piece, it will come back and stay in your head on the way back … If here the clear singing comes to detract from the rest of the groups, the accuracy and the sense of the show of Ross Jennings is simply to fall. Between a beautiful balance of technical prowess and pure pleasure, the show is marked by a true decomplexion and a love letter to metal. The songs follow one another, focusing on “Virus” and “Fauna“, their last opus, with some more soaring passages like “The Endless Knot” or the older “Falling Back To Earth” which will have made the purists smile during the eleven minutes of the track. The drums hit hard, the guitarists shred while our Lukather look-alike continues to give us the benefit of his organ. Carried by a quality sound, the show takes off in the final saga of the album “Virus“: “Messiah Complex”.It’s time to close the album and this show that took us far, very far away, until returning to its famous theme, taken up in crowd by an audience waiting for this opportunity to give their voice for a band that impresses track after track in an almost insulting decomplexity.
Setlist:Prosthetic, Invasion, The Alphabet Of Me, Falling Back To Earth, Taurus, The Endless Knot, Lovebite,Carousel,Messiah Complex I: Ivory Tower, Messiah Complex II: A Glutton For Punishment, Messiah Complex III: Marigold, Messiah Complex IV: The Sect, Messiah Complex V: Ectobius Rex
In spite of quality openers, we can only retain Haken so much the show was intense. We were afraid when we arrived that the band would get lost in an asceptised prog, we were wrong. We sang, we tried to move our heads in rhythm but the band didn’t want us to do that because of the untimely rhythm changes. A real laboratory of sharp rhythms and melodies that touch the heart, Haken is a must-see show.