
Haken are a prog rock band with feels from electronica and post rock, their work reminds me of Yes but after some kind of love affair with members of Tangerine Dream and Rush. Spectacular fills and builds crescendo with rock mountains of sheer brilliance, and fun melodies simply crisp the edges with a flame of purple heat.
Those of us who like their music to do more than create earworms and make us move our backsides are in for the works when setting this album to play. If we sit and let it happen, we find that it doesn't matter what we're doing, tidying up, reading a book, sitting staring out of the window, something happens that makes us pay attention. It's not the ferocious rock spirit that grabs us at first, but some other thing that is so hard to touch with words, but it has a sense of urgency in the tempo, it almost poses as music and gives us the impression that we really have to take heed.
Rewards are quick to manifest, the rhythm is a tidal machine and huge talents on all the equipment simply fill the gaps with such hefty meat that even the most skilled butcher of sound would sweat at the brow upon realising their oath to this band.
I love the way Haken's singer is able to produce real story telling elements of the work, so often lyrics are used to add to the music and not really give more layers of human experience, but with Affinity, it's easy to spot that we have an album that delivers not only music but a versed passage of mentality which describes more than the sound, it creeps up on us and drags us into their realm of thrashing energy bound to the eternal fizzing soul. Blue virtuoso guitars and bass which funks the hell out of the patchwork of drum patterns thrown together in a Frankenstein of brilliance and jazzical rage, a soaring effect is created as the culmination of energies peak as a tidal wave of power.
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