Formed in London in the late 2000s, the six musicians of Haken established themselves within a decade as one of the spearheads of modern progressive metal, avowed heirs of Dream Theater yet nourished by wider references, from jazz-rock to electronic music. Fauna, their sixth studio album, pursues that exploration by attaching each track to an animal, a pretext for a gallery of sonic portraits as varied as they are ambitious.
The critics (an 82 average across eight reviews) hail a writing of constant richness, carried by a rhythm section of fearsome precision and by the melodies of Ross Jennings, a singer of warm timbre who humanises the complexity of the arrangements. They praise the band’s capacity to make jagged passages and luminous choruses coexist.
Musically, Fauna deploys the full arsenal of the genre: shifting time signatures, teeming keyboards, guitars by turns metallic and airy. But Haken avoid the pitfall of cold display by injecting into their compositions a theatricality, a sense of narrative that holds the listener in suspense from end to end.
Still, that abundance has its reverse: in seeking to embrace everything, the record sometimes lacks an emotional through-line, and certain tracks impress more than they move. Technical intoxication, in Haken, can border on overload.
Verdict: 8/10. A teeming, brilliantly executed record confirming Haken at the summit of a playful, cultivated progressive metal.
