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-