A year after their release 'The Mountain', Haken is back with an EP. The three
songs on the EP are not newly written songs, but reworked versions of tracks
from
their 2007 self produced demo. I don't think a lot of fans know this material,
so they will be very pleased that the band has made this step. I am one of them,
who doesn't know
the demo, so for me the three songs are new and I can't compare them with the
older versions.
"Darkest Light" is a song with rather heavy riffs and it has some Dream Theater
influences. The typical Haken melodic choruses see to it that it is their very
recognizable style. Second track "Earthling" is a lot softer and mellow
song with nice vocal harmonies in the second part. The most impressive track
however is "Crystallised", an over 19 minutes long song. The musicians show that
they are very technically skilled, the song has some jazz elements in the
beginning, a beautiful chorus, orchestral arrangements and some quite heavier
pieces with hunting keyboard parts. Also a canon kind of singing part a
bit in Savatage/TSO style is present. In fact it has too many elements and
variation that it is impossible to tell everything about it. The last
information I can give you that it has guest appearances by Pete Rinaldi and
Mike Portnoy and is one of the best Haken tracks to date.
If you like their album 'The Mountain', you love this three-track EP as well.
