Fallujah - Dreamless

I spoke pretty highly of Fallujah's preceding album The Flesh Prevails as I and most everyone who heard it agreed it was an excellent record dragged down by an anchor of a bad production job, clocking in at an unfortunate DR score of 3 (allegedly the vinyl mix is of largely better sonic quality). It's been two years since then and we're now presented with the group's latest work, Dreamless.

First things first: yes, the production is definitely better on this disc than the standard mix of The Flesh Prevails. No, it still isn't very good as it only raises the DR needle up to a 5, but it's certainly a step in the right direction -- and to be honest, I never really had a huge problem with the production of the previous record as the brick-walled solidity of the thing seemed to fit with the blast-beat laden tech death angle they seemed to be going for: a dark, moonlight glacial shelf of an album. It doesn't excuse all of it, but I could get past it to pick up what the band was putting down, and in any case Dreamless sounds almost like the lost second disc of the double album it sounds like it was supposed to be a part of with The Flesh Prevails, so expect a similar sonic palette here: Andrew Baird's drumming is still top-notch and the guitar duo of Andrew Carstairs and Brian James put in some excellent work, particularly on the standout tracks "The Void Alone" and "Scar Queen". Fallujah continues to experiment with a blend of progressive death metal and ambient trance-scapes, with Dreamless featuring a much greater emphasis on the softer, more ethereal aspects of their sound than previous albums ever have, to mixed results. Lori Tezler contributes some suitably airy vocals to several tracks to nice effect a la Roniit Alkayam's work on the previous album, but the guitar playing here really deserves mention, as the first half of Dreamless in particular features some seriously spectacular fretwork.

The disc is roughly divided into two halves, with the front half containing several heavier pieces that gradually decline in intensity as things progress, developing into a home stretch of songs that explore the group's interest in trance and ambience even further than previous tracks like "Alone With You". These deeper forays into electronica strike me as less self-assured and well-constructed as those found on their previous record - "Fidelio" and "Les Silences" stick out from the rest of the compositions in a major way, and while I appreciate a break from the breakneck speed of the other tracks, these detours just don't mesh with the rest of Dreamless, nor do the one-off inclusion of clean vocals from Alex Hofmann on "Wind for Wings". Happily, though, a couple of terrific barn-stormers round out the package in the title track and album closer "Lacuna". While the less metallic elements of their sound needs some refinement, Fallujah is firing on all cylinders with the remainder of Dreamless: the good far outweighs the bad here.

C+

Haken - Enter the 5th Dimension

Listening to Affinity and Restoration reminded me how long it's been since I've actually popped this thing in and gave it a whirl. Now I don't remember exactly how tough I was on Restoration back when it first came out, because holy shit is Enter The 5th Dimension a lot rougher than I had ever remembered.

It starts out strong - "Blind" is a solid track even though the weak-ass tissue-paper production render the guitars thinner-sounding than an Al Stewart album, and I'm always up for obscure samples plunked down in the middle of the song, but the solo section definitely goes on for too long a la "A Nightmare to Remember". What's really impressive is how the Restoration remake "Darkest Light" is almost half as long while still not giving up anything essential. "Black Seed" continues this trend of not having needed much work to update for Restoration - the redux "Earthlings" differs slightly in lyrics and vocal arrangements but is otherwise a strict upgrade with excellent atmosphere and The Mountain-esque harmony singing.

Things start to slip past that, though - "Manifolds" is a functional instrumental but it pales in comparison to their rare future instrumentals or even the instrumental sections in later songs. "Souls" features a rare acoustic bit opening things up and is the song I was most looking forward to in a rewritten form, while closer "Snow" provided the template for the prog snob panty dropper "Crystallized" at a distinctly slower BPM and with perhaps some unfortunate lyrical choices -- the Restoration revitalization, despite dragging towards the end, is a more satisfying experience on all counts.

Held up against the polished and well-honed material on Restoration, Enter The 5th Dimension looks pretty rough, but it was a product of it's time: clearly a band experimenting with a lot of different ideas, concerned more with just collaborating together and seeing what they could put together -- certainly not something that can be held against them particularly harshly.

C-

Haken - Affinity

Arriving three years after their well-received third record The Mountain, British progressive metal standard bearers Haken's latest selection Affinity sticks out from the rest of their catalog for a couple of reasons, the biggest being that this is the first full-fledged LP featuring the band's new bass player, Connor Green, who replaced Thomas MacLean - one of the founding members of the group. Green's first recording with the band was a stopgap EP entitled Restoration, which featured material fashioned from the the outfit's hard-to-find demo album, Enter The 5th Dimension. It was tough to figure out whether Green was a good fit as I didn't find anything memorable about the bass work he contributed to Restoration, but with Affinity it seems like he's had more of a chance to lock in with the rest of the boys and deliver some solid parts.

Rather than go for the more literal concept album experience they've delivered in the past, Haken has opted to evoke more of a sci-fi / 80s Blood Dragon-esque feeling with Affinity. This new approach is lamp shaded immediately with the electronic tones of opener "affinity.exe" and is brought right up to the surface with the excellent "1985" which contains a surprisingly tasteful resurrection of old-school electronic drum hits and synth runs. Other highlights include the excellent pop hopefulness of "Earthrise", the Mountain-esque, deep space serenity of closer "Bound by Gravity", and a less than ideal amount of the 15 minute heavyweight "The Architect". This piece is the hinge the rest of Affinity pivots around, but except for a functional yet workmanlike opening displaying some of the most transparent bits of Dream Theater influenced material they've put together and a criminally underused Einar Solberg (of Leprous) who's black-ice vocals are relegated to the closing few minutes of the song. The other material found here doesn't so much "suffer" from post-Restoration Haken's sound but rather just kind of reinforce the direction they seem to be heading in -- sleeker production, less interesting vocal arrangements (The Mountain's harmonies seem almost alien compared to the single-voice approach heard here) and a bit of a missing element of the fun, wacky, admittedly gimmicky band that produced songs like "Celestial Elixir" and "Cockroach King". I'm not really going to miss the circus music breaks, but it's what that kind of stuff represented: unpredictability. They broke out the goofy shit just often enough to add an element of "At any moment this song could devolve into death growls and Muppet sound effects" that helped Haken stand out from the legions of other progressive metal Dream Theater tribute bands all playing different flavors of the same stuff. And when you strip away all those quirky "Haken-y" things from the music, stuff starts to sound kinda generic. In the end Affinity is just a little too sleek and polished for it's own good.

Edit: So since I wrote this I've had some more time to digest this record (and it's awesome packaging). I've softened up on it on the whole - the production is obviously better on a physical copy and getting a chance to look at the lyrics to figure out what the hell Ross is singing is a plus, but my first kneejerk reaction that Affinity wasn't going to replace The Mountain or even Aquarius as my favorite Haken album still holds. That doesn't change the fact that "1985", "Bound by Gravity", and "Lapse" are excellent songs, though.

B- 

Hyper Light Drifter First Impressions

Ever since Transistor I've apparently been infected by an aversion to new, challenging games. I'm hopelessly trapped replaying old favorites like Far Cry 2 (while eagerly awaiting the latest iteration of Ziggy's Mod for 3) and new ones like Mad Max, while being acutely aware of how excellent both Transistor and newly released Indie darling Hyper Light Drifter and I fully *intend* to complete them. Both of these games have incredible artwork, soundtracks, and mechanics, but Drifter is just... not fun to play with a keyboard and mouse and apparently I was scared off by the depth of Transistor's mix-n-match combat abilities.

I guess it's not really surprising since I'm working an actual, real, legit 40-hours-a-week get-paid-every-two-weeks job that my tolerance and willingness to seek out and endure challenging and original games has withered so severely, but yeah -- I'm basically the average consumer of video games at this point. I'm sure at some point I'll have the itch for these games again, but until then I'm pretty damn happy spending my reduced gaming time on sure bets. Pretty selfish, right?