As its name suggests, progressive music is all about forward movement, avoiding stagnation and creative tailspins by combining existing ideas in new ways, innovating rather than merely recycling. At this point, humanity’s archive of recorded music is almost unfathomably vast, not to mention immediately accessible through the digital devices we carry with us everywhere we go. In that sense, potential inspiration never leaves us – but it is still down to us to remain open to fresh experiences and make the most of them.
Just a few years ago, one of prog’s most fertile creative sources – former Dream Theater drummer Mike Portnoy – approached the open-minded members of Haken, bearing the inspirational opportunity of a lifetime. Vocalist Ross Jennings, bassist Conner Green, keyboard player Diego Tejeida, and guitarists Charlie Griffiths and Richard Henshall became the core of Mike Portnoy’s Shattered Fortress, the touring band hand-picked by the man himself to play Dream Theater’s famed 12-Step Suite. A set of five songs based around the addiction management program developed by Alcoholics Anonymous, Portnoy’s opus – along with a selection of other intense cuts from his former outfit’s back catalog – would have a profound, subconscious impact on Haken as they began work on their latest album, Vector.
Play Vector on your device of choice, and you’ll immediately notice how much heavier this album is in comparison to Haken’s previous work. “We did a whole year of touring in Mike Portnoy’s Shattered Fortress,” explains Richard Henshall. “They're all fairly heavy songs, and we had to spend a whole year or so learning the songs, then touring them as well for about a year. Naturally, doing that amount of playing that type of music is going to bleed out into your own stuff. But it certainly wasn't a conscious effort; it was more just a reflection of what we were doing for the whole year.”
Dream Theater and their octopus-limbed mastermind aside, Haken also spent plenty of time listening to “a lot of Meshuggah,” while Henshall himself took influence from an unusual but brilliant source. “[I was] listening to a lot of Tigran Hamasyan, who's this Armenian jazz pianist. He fuses these crazy, polyrhythmic, Meshuggah-like rhythms with weird Armenian folk melodies, almost treating the piano like a guitar, the way he's riffing on it. It's really satisfying music to listen to, [and] I tried to channel some of that into my rhythmic playing on my guitar.”
“When I was growing up, I listened to a lot of heavier stuff,” Henshall continues. “I used to love Fear Factory, [especially] their album Obsolete. For the first couple of minutes of the instrumental track on Vector, “Nil by Mouth”, we tried to channel some of that industrial, hard-hitting metal sound. I'd say that's arguably the heaviest two minutes in Haken’s history.”
It’s tough to argue with that assertion – and the behind-the-scenes presence of one of progressive metal’s most acclaimed producers helped Haken make their new sound even more cohesive. “We got [ex-Periphery bassist] Nolly Getgood involved,” says Henshall. “We had that idea fairly early on, because the ideas we were coming out with were a lot heavier than our previous stuff. So he seemed like the logical choice for us.”
“[Nolly] brought so much to the sound,” Henshall states. “He oversaw a large part of the drum recording, and went down and tuned the drums in a specific way, to bring out the natural resonance of the kit, which ultimately made the drums sound huge and far bigger than we've ever had them sounding before.”
Getgood also helped Henshall and co-axeman Charlie Griffiths develop their guitar tones, enabling them to dip their toes into djent-infested waters while maintaining Haken’s fundamental personality. As Henshall explains, “We try not to bombard listeners with too much [djent]. Once we dilute it with other elements, like keyboard sounds, it becomes less in-your-face.”
Vector is clearly not another shallow batch of brutal songs rushed out in the hope of inhaling the last gasp of a dying trend. Behind the music lies a fascinating concept, a collection of Easter eggs that Haken mostly want listeners to reveal for themselves. This is an album its creators want you to spend plenty of time digesting – and to be fair, it would require that kind of attention even without this degree of additional depth.
“I won't be too explicit, but I'll just talk about “The Good Doctor”, which is essentially setting the scene for the rest of the album,” says Henshall. “In the song, there's a sadistic doctor who's giving electric shock therapy to a patient. And during this process, the patient unearths a whole bunch of bad memories from his past, that he essentially has to overcome and try to deal with throughout the whole album.”
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“The album is basically seen through the patient's eyes, but there's a general theme of psychoanalysis and psychotherapy that's running through it all, which we reference in various parts throughout the lyrics. There's a bunch of other things that people are going to pick up on, and interpret in their own way.”
Given its focus on mental health, Vector’s theme sounds very timely. “I think it definitely reflects what's going on in the real world,” Henshall says. “You can argue that music is almost like a form of therapy; who knows where I'd be if I didn't have music! When I sit down and play, I really feel like I'm getting rid of all those bad thoughts, and it's almost like a therapy for me. So I guess you could see that as a parallel on the album.”
After ten years in the game and so many achievements, life as a creative musician is finally on the verge of becoming Henshall’s full-time concern. “Last year I gave up my teaching job; I used to teach piano and guitar in schools,” he explains. “So I just want to keep pushing Haken to higher levels and bigger stages. That's the dream of every musician, and we're pretty much there. We’ll see how it goes!”
