Posts Tagged ‘Haken’

Watch: ‘Don’t Go Too Early’ by Asymmetric Universe

Posted: 4 June 2024 in Recommended Streams and Videos, Singles and EPs
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InsideOutMusic is proud to announce the signing of Italian instrumental, prog-metal fusionists Asymmetric Universe to a new worldwide deal. The band, formed by brothers Federico Vese & Nicolò Vese, are also pleased to launch a brand new track titled ‘Don’t Go Too Early’, and you can watch the video for that here:

The band comment:

“We are so excited to join such a big family as InsideOutMusic! Being part of a team with legendary artists and bands that we’ve been listening to since we started studying music, is a dream come true!

Our new single, “Don’t Go Too Early”, is a mixture of fusion-jazz, aggressive progressive metal, wind quartet arrangements and an avant-garde string quartet orchestration, that brings a unique colour to complex yet catchy music. We can’t wait to share with you all the music we are already working on!”

Freddy Palmer, InsideOutMusic, adds: “Asymmetric Universe are a perfect example of the kind of exciting, instrumental guitar music making waves right now, and we couldn’t be more thrilled to add them to the label’s roster, and be a part of their bright future.”

The band are currently confirmed to support Plini & Haken in Milan, Italy on the 5th July, as well as playing Arctangent Festival in the UK on the 16th August alongside Meshuggah, Animals As Leaders & many more.

Formed in 2018, with the goal of pushing the limit of modern prog and fusing disparate genres, they combine metal with jazz & ambient music, alongside chamber orchestration. In 2023, the band released their second EP ‘The Sun Would Disappear As I Imagined All The Stars’, which was mixed by Forrester Savell and mastered by Ermin Hamidovic. They also embarked on their first European tour as support to Australian progressive metallers Ne Obliviscaris, as well as opening for Caligula’s Horse in Italy.

Both brothers are mostly self-taught musicians, who have been heavily involved in composition and orchestration, as well as music production.

Federico has composed music for as wide ranging places as Radio Montecarlo (one of the biggest Italian radio stations), as well as one of the largest Italian amusement park Mirabilandia. He is a metal/rock producer and this background influences his work as a composer in the video game industry. He is also a professional music and guitar teacher with online students from different parts of the world.

Nicolò has composed pieces for various orchestral organisations (two pieces were performed in the latest symphonic season of Orchestra Sinfonica of Sanremo and one performed at Rome Jazz Festival in 2021 with a big band), worked as a composer in many Musicals and he is currently working in the video game soundtrack industry (also as a sound designer), ranging from indie games to bigger productions. He also professionally teaches composition, orchestration and adaptive music techniques for video games.

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Watch: ‘Lovebite’ by Haken

Posted: 15 February 2023 in Recommended Streams and Videos
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Yes, we’re a day late with this, but… pah, fuck it. It’s a solid and epic tune.

Progressive rockers Haken are set to release their seventh studio album Fauna on the 3rd March 2023, the group’s most genre-busting and conceptually fascinating album to date.

Today, the band celebrate Valentine’s Day with the launch of their latest single ‘Lovebite’.

Watch the video now here:

‘Fauna’ sees the band exploring new ideas conceptually as Ross continues. “The premise of the album when we started writing it was that every song would have an animal assigned to it. They all have something related to the animal kingdom that we could write about, but they also connect to the human world. Each track has layers, and some of them are more obvious than others.”

“It reminds me of The Mountain,” adds guitarist and fellow founder Richard Henshall. “There, we had the idea of not really a narrative-based album, but more the concept of climbing a mountain and overcoming the obstacles along the way. Then we took that and thought about how it could relate to our everyday lives. All of Fauna’s animals relate to us, personally.”

‘Fauna’ also marks the return of keyboard player Peter Jones, whose sounds can be heard permeating the entire album. “What Pete’s brought sonically to the band has played a massive role in why we do have a lot of new sounds on this record,” says Ross. “It’s always a new dynamic when there’s a change in personnel, and this is a fresh and reviving one. It’s certainly helped proximity-wise, with Pete being in the country: Pete and Ray [Hearne, Haken’s drummer] would be at Rich’s place and they’d just start jamming. That’s really key to how the songs start.”

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Watch: ‘Taurus’ by Haken

Posted: 18 January 2023 in Recommended Streams and Videos
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Progressive rockers Haken recently announced their seventh studio album Fauna, the group’s most genre-busting and conceptually fascinating album to date, will be released on the 3rd March 2023.

Today, the band are pleased to release ‘Taurus’ the 3rd single from the album.

You can watch the video, produced by Crystal Spotlight, here:

Fauna sees the band exploring new ideas conceptually as Ross continues. “The premise of the album when we started writing it was that every song would have an animal assigned to it. They all have something related to the animal kingdom that we could write about, but they also connect to the human world. Each track has layers, and some of them are more obvious than others.”

“It reminds me of The Mountain,” adds guitarist and fellow founder Richard Henshall. “There, we had the idea of not really a narrative-based album, but more the concept of climbing a mountain and overcoming the obstacles along the way. Then we took that and thought about how it could relate to our everyday lives. All of Fauna’s animals relate to us, personally.”

Fauna also marks the return of keyboard player Peter Jones, whose sounds can be heard permeating the entire album. “What Pete’s brought sonically to the band has played a massive role in why we do have a lot of new sounds on this record,” says Ross. “It’s always a new dynamic when there’s a change in personnel, and this is a fresh and reviving one. It’s certainly helped proximity-wise, with Pete being in the country: Pete and Ray [Hearne, Haken’s drummer] would be at Rich’s place and they’d just start jamming. That’s really key to how the songs start.”

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Haken – Virus

Posted: 24 July 2020 in Albums
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InsideOut Music – 24th July 2020

Christopher Nosnibor

It’s almost as if they planned it, or saw it coming (although not sufficiently to prevent the release date being put back three times). And you could almost believe it, too: there’s a potently portentous aspect to Haken’s brand of progressive rock, and Virus is very much timely as much for its ruminations on the psychology of contemporary culture, as the press release explains:

‘If ‘Vector’ was an origin story, ‘Virus’ portrays an ascent to power, tyranny and subsequent endgame. The opening track, ‘Prosthetic’, bridges the two albums where scars of institutional abuse are brought into focus. This 6-minute onslaught of brutal riffing starts the spread of a virus that affects all aspects of our lives, be they biological, psychological, technological, environmental or political.’

They’ve been working on the album since the release of Vector in October 2018, and it shows: the level of detail in the interweaving guitars and the spacious melodies are remarkable, but then, so are the thunderous riffs.

The ten-and-a-half-minute ‘Carousel’ is a clear standout, and packs the experience of an entire album into a single song. The rest of the songs are much more concise, at least if you take the five-part ‘Messiah Complex’ suite as separate chapters. As you’d perhaps expect, this is a grand and grandiose sequence, with everything elevated and amplified, and with the addition of some bombastic orchestral strikes, while the final part, subtitled ‘Ectobius Rex’ goes full-on industrial metal riffage.

Elsewhere. ‘Canary Yellow’ is a condensed epic, soaring shoegaze anthem, while the final song, ‘Only Stars’ is a magnificently sparse affair which finds Ross Jennings emoting an almost choral elegy. It feels like a moment of calm reflection in the wake of a wave of devastation.

For all of the heavy power chords that crash like slabs of granite in a most contemporary metal way, I’m in some way reminded of Jeff Wayne’s musical version of The War of the Worlds and Mansun’s Six, although Jennings’ vocals often carry that rich but troubled soulfulness of Dave Gahan. If this all sounds like an unlikely and improbable cocktail, it’s testament to Haken’s abilities that they make it all work not only cohesively, but deliver some great songs along the way.

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