If you’re talking about modern progressive rock and don’t bring up Haken, you’re doing it wrong. Since the south English sextet started jamming together in 2004, they’ve been one of their genre’s most loyal yet, simultaneously, adventurous forces. And how do you honour such an eclectic, unpredictable career? You make Fauna: Haken’s most genre-busting and conceptually fascinating album to date.
Musically, Fauna represents Haken at their most diverse. Taurus commences the album with its scraping heavy metal chords, as polyrhythmic as they are jagged. However, Ross’s melodic croon and the triumphant chorus are true Haken. Eyes Of Ebony is pure math rock, delicate in its start-stop clean guitar picking and chiming cymbals, while Island In The Clouds flaunts its bouncing bassline…

A concept album telling the tale of a patient in an asylum being subjected to all kinds of psychological and physical experiments, `Vector' mixes the heavy instrumental show-boating runs with frantic rock and thoughtful ballad passages that the band always deliver, even if they strip back virtually all of the Seventies/Eighties influences from their past few discs this time around, and they throw in a touch of jazz and electronica along with a big variety of rich vocal arrangements.

Haken have proven over three previous albums and two EPs that musically, they can do pretty much anything they set their minds to. That said, the question was one of where to go after 2014's compelling and adventurous release, The Mountain. With new bassist Conner Green replacing Thomas MacLean, the band rethought its approach to songwriting. Previously, they'd composed around themes and ideas by keyboardist/guitarist Richard Henshall, but these nine cuts were written by all six members.
Affinity contains a themed schematic that deliberately falls short of a full concept: the ubiquitous presence of computers and their evolving relationship with human life…

Like fine wine, progressive rock bands normally require years of careful fermentation before maturing into a great vintage, so it's shocking, bordering on unbelievable, when a brand new group hits the scene so fully formed as did Britain's Haken. Indeed, Haken's 2010 debut, Aquarius, landed just two years after the sextet's initial creation, and yet the breathtaking scope of its ambitions, stylistic hybridization, and sheer instrumental skill suggest entire decades of accumulated experience between those involved. Just picture Dream Theater dabbling in harsher heavy metal ingredients (death metal vocals, mainly), as well as the fearless excess of poetic ‘70s prog rock originals Genesis and the classically inclined Kansas, and let the music flesh out the resulting mental canvas…

Having released its first album "Aquarius" only a decade ago, HAKEN has since become one of prog metal's most celebrated and anticipated acts with a series of albums and EPs that show a band that loves to change things up on every release without losing the core idiosyncrasies that makes this English band stand out from the prog metal pack…

‘Virus’ is the culmination of a musical thought experiment which started with the ‘Vector’ writing sessions in 2017 and holds intriguing potential for the band’s future, as vocalist Ross Jennings explains, “whilst ‘Virus’ can absolutely be enjoyed as a stand-alone work, it is thematically and conceptually linked with ‘Vector’, so our intention is to perform both albums back to back for a special performance someday”.

With "Aquarius" Haken had been recognized by many as one of the next legends of progressive music. With "Visions", their sophomore LP released a year after was this prediction seems to be certain: the band has reached a level of maturity and songwriting that make their music sound always unpredictable and open to new horizons. It is obvious that the band has taken a step forward and truly learned what progressive music is, improving their style in every way. However, the style itself hasn't changed much; it's still that blend of prog rock and metal that we loved so much a year ago. "Visions" has topped pretty much every single prog album in 2011. This is the first LP for which Haken will be remembered as the paladins of prog rock/metal to come.