Vector

After combining metal and 70s prog eccentricity on their first albums, and referencing 80s prog on their previous release Affinity, with their fifth album Vector, Haken move into the territory of contemporary (heavier) prog metal. Dream Theater and 70s prog are still major influences on the band, but Vector also brings in more modern and heavier influences – from djenty riffs, to Muse-like extravaganza (“The Good Doctor”), to darker atmospheres that remind me of bands like Porcupine Tree and Anathema (“Host”, “A Cell Divides”). It’s a mix that sounds fresh and exciting and that will please long-time fans of the band as well as secure some new ones among those who, like me, found their previous output a bit too much “out there” for comfort.

On Vector, Haken make in fact an attempt at keeping their songwriting more focused and accessible, especially compared to their earlier albums. There is of course still plenty of complexity and technical wizardry going on here. The songs typically contain multiple parts and extended instrumental passages where the band can showcase all their proficiency with their instruments. And it wouldn’t be Haken if there weren’t the occasional “out there” moments, where the band weaves in into the music the most ridiculous ideas, making them work somehow (for instance, the weird dance beats that surface in the background of “Nil By Mouth”, or the bizarre choice of sounds in many songs by keyboard wizard Diego Tejeida).

But the musical mayhem that Haken usually unleashes on their albums feels more restrained and under control on Vector, almost as if the band made a conscious attempt at writing songs that could appeal to audiences that prefer their prog metal built on atmosphere and texture rather than on full-blown extravaganza. This is most apparent on tracks like “The Good Doctor”, “Host” or “A Cell Divides”, which are based on a simplified and more effective songwriting compared to the other tracks on the album and much of the band’s previous output.

Elsewhere, this exercise in restraint is not as successful, though. “Puzzle Box”, the instrumental piece “Nil by Mouth” and especially “Veil” see Haken return to their beloved “everything-but-the-kitchen-sink” approach, letting ideas fly free and land wherever they may. These tracks do not work very well for me. “Puzzle Box” is the one I like the most, it’s well-constructed and never veers too far off for me to lose interest at any point. However, it does feel a little bit too artificial and “safe”, almost as if it’s been written by following a tried-and-true template, and without really putting too much heart into it. “Nil by Mouth” and “Veil” are more complex workouts that feel rather unfocused and fail to hold my attention all the way through. One issue I have with these songs is that, although they are composed of multiple parts, the different sections often sound quite similar to one another and tend to merge into a blur for me. The heavy sections all rely on djenty, downtuned riffs supported by a frantic rhythm section and embellished by extravagant keyboard flourishes, and it’s quite hard to tell them apart, even after repeated listens. The quieter sections are fairly anonymous too and do not really stand out enough. The result is that the dynamics do not work very well on these tracks, the peaks being too flat and the valleys too shallow. It also does not help that these three more complex songs are placed one after another in the tracklist. I think the album would have had a better flow if Haken had mixed things up a bit, for instance by moving one between “Host” and “A Cell Divide” (which are also fairly similar to one another), further up in the tracklist.

Overall, Vector is a good album, which sees a band trying to find their footing in a new territory, with a heavier sound and a more controlled songwriting. The album is only partially successful in honing the new sound, and Haken will only fully realize their vision on their subsequent stellar album,VIrus. Nevertheless, Vector will most likely not disappoint long-term fan of the band and, at the same time, may also appeal to those who are not yet familiar with Haken but appreciate modern “djenty” prog metal in the vein of bands like Caligula’s Horse, Periphery or Leprous.

I was introduced to Haken via a Youtube channel called BangerTV. At the end of one of their reviews, a member of that channel recommended Haken. I literally never knew Haken existed until that moment. As I am always searching for new music, I decided to jam their new release on Spotify on the way to work. I didn't know I'd get sucked up THIS much though. Haken is a very rare band for me as I really don't listen to a band out of the blue and instantly fall in love with their music. After the amazing intro song, "Clear", I was hooked. It's a perfect tune to introduce the album and has elements from each song thereafter.

This is definitely not a band I could listen to so many years ago. My mind was made up that I needed to listen to the most brutal music possible. Death metal and thrash metal ruled my ears and I wouldn't give a band like this a second thought. However, I feel like once I hit a certain age I knew good music was hard to find. In this day and age there is almost no creativity. There are great bands doing great things, but I think specifically in the metal community it's hard to find a band that will continue to surprise album after album. I went back in time and listened to their albums in reverse order. Only their last album, "Affinity" really had an impact on me as much as "Vector", but I'll continue to listen.

What makes this album so special can't be narrowed down to one thing. All the instrumentals and vocals are spectacular. The main vocals from Ross Jennings are the standout for me on here. His range is incredible. In most songs he can go from highs to lows almost effortlessly, a good example being the song "Host". The longer songs, like "Veil" and "Puzzle Box", fluctuate and have a great buildup which his vocals match. Then when the songs slow down a bit, his vocals match that too. It blends perfectly with the instrumentals. Everything flows so well.

I rarely say this, but keyboards is another highlight for me. Diego Tejeida and Richard "Hen" Henshall do a fantastic job. "Puzzle Box" is especially packed with keyboard talent. Haken really tries to crunch every song with as much content as possible and due to that, there isn't a dull moment on this entire album. A lot of bands have slow sections in their songs that's just filled with random sounds or slow to the point of boredom. Here, all the slow sections are just filled with something else. It's really hard to explain.

Obviously everyone else on this album does a great job too. Ray Hearne on drums has some amazing sections in each song. It really shows when you're listening to the instrumental version of the album. He has speed and plenty of complexity in his drumming. Being a progressive metal album, you would think the guitars would dominate over everything else. While they do stand out in a few songs like "Veil" and "Nil by Mouth", it's definitely not overpowering. The solos performed by Charles Griffiths and Richard "Hen" Henshall are amazing and elevate the songs they appear on. They are used just enough to make you want more in each song. I kind of wish I did have a bit more guitar complexity in other songs. When you notice the bass by Conner Green, you say to yourself, "wow this is really good", but I have to admit that it was the last thing I noticed on here. Maybe with a few more listens I'll learn to appreciate it more, but for right now everything else stands out so much the bass kind of gets buried in my opinion.

Overall, I really love the album. Each song is beautiful in their own right. I wish I understood the lyrics a bit more. I blame that on myself because I know Haken probably set out to write beautiful music and I just don't understand it haha. "The Good Doctor" is pretty obvious lyrically and I loved the more straight forward approach on that song. Other than that I found myself trying to overly focus on understanding the lyrics and that took me away from the beautiful instrumentals. As I said before, on the special edition of this album there are instrumental versions of all non-instrumental songs. I'm listening to it as I write this review and it's insanely relaxing.

Do yourself a favor and listen to this album. If you love what you hear like I did, it will make you go back and listen to their previous material. I see people saying how great their past music was and how this is a weak entry in their discography, but having started with this album, I can't really be disappointed. The quality can really only go up from here. "Vector" by Haken is definitely one of my contenders for album of the year.

Haken are easily some of the most remarkable artists in the progressive metal scene right now. With four progressive masterpieces released in record time from 2010 to 2016, they have shown that they are not only incredible musicians but can also come up with, and properly express, some of the weirdest and most original concepts the world has ever seen. Whether it's full stories or just conceptual ideas, they've had no trouble in displaying deep wisdom, tragedy, obsession, mystery, philosophy and even creating musical riddles for their fans to try and resolve. However, I've never seen them go completely psychotic before, and as it turns out, they even do that with unmatched finesse and elegance.

Out of all their releases, "Vector" is probably the one that steps out of the pattern the most (as if there was ever a pattern to begin with). It is the shortest, only 44 minutes in length, and that is a huge difference given the fact that all their previous albums were easily over an hour long. It also feels the most "to the point" with only one song over 10 minutes and a lot less fiddling with atmospheric stuff but most of all, it is easily their craziest, heaviest, fastest and most nerve-wracking. It also seems to blend ideas from all the music they made before. It appears to have a story about a mental patient of some sort, but the lyrics are seriously abstract and enigmatic, leaving you wondering where that story actually goes. And musically, it has all the faces of Haken that we were previously introduced to as well as a few new ones. The overall atmosphere really takes me back to "Visions", being seriously odd and obsessive and not giving you anything right between the eyes, leaving you unsure of what everything means and really messing with your head. However, when it comes to songwriting, it is a lot more similar to what they did on "The Mountain" and "Affinity". But there's another twist because while the previously mentioned were clearly Haken's brightest sounding albums, this one just might be their darkest. To keep it simple, it's a cocktail of everything Haken's been so far with quite a lot of new elements that you're not expecting, all wrapped up by madness!

I'm gonna start with the backbone of the whole ensemble here. Drummer Ray Hearne may have appeared to many as being focused on a lot of jazzy, progressive and avant-garde stuff and while there's no denying that he is a truly outstanding musician, speed has never appeared to be his main focus. But now he doesn't only put that theory to the test. No! He completely crushes it. It seems that somehow he metamorphosized into a complete tech-maniac! While his progressive and groovy abilities are still abundantly present, he seems to have upgraded those things with death metal and djent style drumming. Another thing is that he just takes the tempos a lot higher.

Now what this means is that the others have to keep up. So you have one guy going bananas and the others, instead of trying to keep him under control, decide to mimic the example. As a result you get a lot of fast, heavy, always changing guitar riffs and bass fills. The album is very unpredictable and you really never know where it's gonna go. There are more static parts where they choose a few notes or chords and fiddle with the time signatures and then there are parts where they just start moving all over the place in progressive entropy. The keyboards are probably what stays most similar to their previous work. They are the main element responsible for building the atmosphere and for keeping it melodic. However, Diego also wanted his shot at madness so he's got an awesome duel with the guitar in Veil (probably their most technical solos to date) and when he unleashes the synthesizer effects, the ensemble of sounds that he can create outrun everything he's done so far. While we're on the topic of sci-fi wizardry, this album is mixed by Adam Nolly (bassist in Periphery) and he brought a lot of punch but also a lot of clarity and precision to the sound making it the most impactful one of their albums.

Upon all this, Ross Jennings' soft melodic and impressive vocals remain unchanged. It would be a shame if Vector was only crazy, wouldn't it? When he sings, especially above the most torn apart progressive rhythms, he is what keeps the music still making sense and preventing you from getting seizures. And above so much relentless battering on the concept of splitting time in different units, he is still able to convey the most genuine emotion. And that's when the music goes up to eleven. Because this album is crazy for a reason. It is not a display of skill, technicality or math metal. I guess they really wanted to mess with their fans a little as this album has a seriously abstract concept. In the song "The Good Doctor" you are introduced to a mental patient undergoing treatment based on electricity and I'm not sure if that is actually supposed to be helping him in any way because the album just gets darker from there. In the following tracks, if the lyrics still refer to this character which I'm actually not sure of, his mind appears to crumbling like he's losing his mind completely.

After the mesmerizing instrumental track "Nil by Mouth", the album takes a really unexpected turn with a ballad. "Host" is a very sad song, the clean guitar elements reminding me of "Sun" all the way back on "Aquarius". However, this song evolves differently as it slowly builds up and it seems to describe one being dying for another to be born... yeah... I'm just guessing here. This one also brings some smooth, jazzy, Flugelhorn, (it's a wind instrument similar to the trumpet) that really accentuates the intensity of the song. I wouldn't be guessing what "Host" is about unless I could connect it with the album closer "A Cell Divides". This really is the key moment of the album. You see, there are different references to the song "The Cockroach King" from "The Mountain" throughout the album. I honestly only spotted the "bring an empire to its knees" lyric in "The Good Doctor" but there are people on their fan group that claim to have found more elements from that song throughout the album. And I really doubt it's a coincidence that in the album closer "the insect comes alive" and "A cell divides and multiplies a strange mutation". (quoting lyrics there). Also in the lyrics it says "Now I'm twisted out of form, By unnatural selection". Could there be a metamorphosis happening in the last two songs that the human dies and the cockroach is born or are Haken just messing with my head. Well the second one of those is certainly true because there's even more mystery revolving around this last song. It bothered me for some time that this album ends really sudden and seems a bit cut out, maybe incomplete, but the instrumental version of "A Cell Divides" is actually one minute longer and has a hidden ending where you can clearly hear the first notes of the vocal melody in "The Cockroach King". And that's all I've got. No bottom lines. You figure it out from here.

Vector definitely shook me and and left an impression as one of the most remarkable releases this year but I am a bit troubled that despite all the innovation, it doesn't feel as epic as their past releases. It is more but it is also less and while it brought something new, I didn't really enjoy it as much as I did the others. It is very demanding to listen to and not as rewarding on some occasions. However, that is all subjective and they remain undeniable prog geniuses in my eyes. Now go listen to their new album and get messed up!

Haken has been one of my favorite bands for about two years. Undoubtedly one of the most talented and ingenious progressive metal bands out there, and with a classic British elegance to their style, these distinguished gentlemen have raised the standards so high with a 4 album discography that it was very hard to envision what else they could do. As they have shown us with “The Mountain” back in 2013, they are not afraid of change and ‘Vector’ confirms that Haken’s creativity has no limits. This band feels like they have an endless library of ideas behind the scenes and every once in a while they will just step into their creative space and make an amazing release, simply because they can.

I was worried that Vector would be less than previous releases. It is quite a lot less in length and the artwork is rather ugly, but they could still squeeze enough new content to live up to their standards and still be respected by their fans. Speaking of innovation, the new album is the most metal version of Haken that we have seen so far. It is the heaviest to date, it’s dynamic, surprising and intricate. At first listen the album felt like a schizophrenic blur that gives lot of justice to Ray (drums). But as expected from a release of such complexity, it takes time to process everything, and 4-5 spins later you find yourself singing along to the melodic bits and eagerly analyzing and tearing apart the complicated grooves and rhythms.

What this band has always succeeded at (and here as well), is making their music very diverse and complete. They excel in every field of music possible. It is technical and difficult, and it is very complex, but it is also cohesive and captivating. They can make simple catchy tunes as well as monumental progressive masterpieces and they can express a colossal range of emotions for a genre that is often tagged as mathematical or inexpressive. Last but not least, their concepts were always hair-raising. Vector is another addition to this collection of balancing extremes, and lays out even more originality for the listener. The music is made up of an enormous array of intricate riffing, groovy drums, elegant and melodic vocals, profound and audible bass, and on top of it all, the sweet avante-garde jazz blues influences and solos. The accent on the heavy bits is more powerful than on previous records to give Vector its distinct personality, and I feel that I must also put Diego Tejeida on the spotlight for what makes this record unique. Every Haken fan yells out that Diego is one of the best metal keyboardists today, but I somehow fail to enclose him in that category. The man is a musical wizard combining a jazz piano player, with a rock keyboardist and a modern DJ. In fact I think if DJs actually tried making music, you would end up with some (just some) of the synthesizer effects that come out of Diego’s starship enterprise of a keyboard. Listen to the song ‘Nil by Mouth’, the only instrumental song, to see a tapestry of every instrumental idea with Diego coming forward a lot. This album seems more electronic and digital-age then previous records so there’s a very obvious contrast between these very strong but also very different main influences to the album. As another yin to yang the jazzy sounds have a very throwback vibe that also contrasts with the space age elements of the music.

To create a better picture of just how much this album gives you, I would have to put every single member in the band under close analysis and start yapping, but there’s just so much going on that it would be easier to just listen to the album. I mean they even have a freakin’ saxophone on the intro of ‘Host’ for God sake. And I don’t even have a clue who recorded it. So I just pointed out what I think is most surprising and unique and the rest I’ll let you discover yourself. But just for the sake of it, I must applaud both guitarists Charlie and Ross, for being the main creative engine behind this sophisticated album.

To top all these different influences and details comes the lyrical concept of the album. Haken have always hidden clues and mysteries in their lyrics to build either a twisted story or just ground-breaking ideas. Vector speaks of a catatonic mental patient and a doctor that gets a very sinister interest in the patient. From that point the story becomes flexible and the guys invite us to pull their lyrics apart and try to make sense of it on our own. It’s hard to figure out really what the true meaning of Vector is, but some lyrics taken from the song “The Cockroach King” back on the mountain and put into context, lead me to think about a metamorphosis from man to bug, maybe under some crazy psychotic treatment. The fact that the term ‘vector’ is also used in epidemiology to describe an agent that can transmit a pathogen, also leads me thinking about insects, as they often carry diseases.

One thing is certain, whether you can make sense of this album or not is a completely different story from whether you can enjoy it. Because it’s satisfying beyond reason. And it’s also difficult to point out exactly how it feels, because it’s always changing. The songs come in so many different shapes, sizes and flavors. There’s your undeniable over 10 minute long epic track ‘Veil’, but then you also have the short, punchy and catchy opener “The Good Doctor” or one of my favorites, the dark jazzy ballad “Host”. The last track is also very surprising because it is different from what Haken usually do. Since the guys are friends with the Norwegian prog band “Leprous” and are currently touring with them, we can see why they sound so similar to this band on this song. But to be honest, their better at being Leprous then the Norse themselves. And I can conclude that with a massive 15 minute shorter run time then the previous release, the only downside to this album is that it’s over way too soon. Vector is a very strong contender for album of the year in my opinion, so if you want the highest standard for progressive metal, Haken must be on your list.

Enjoy!