Haken – The Mountain
This album and the band behind it has just recently appeared on my horizon and already blown me away. I don’t even own a physical copy yet (which I prefer to streaming) but I just have to share it.
On this album Haken manage to combine all sorts of different styles from the good old golden era of Prog with the modern achievements of metal. Weird meters, polyphonic vocals and voluminous riffs combined with extremely skilled solos. The vocals are somewhere between Jon Anderson, Geddy Lee and Kerry Minnear and marry Gentle Giant-like aong structures and harmonies with temporary sounds of today – like some of Spock’s Beard vocals, just heavier.
This album excited me from the first soft chord to the last heavy bang and has been in rotation since.