- Country: UK
- Style: Progressive metal
- Label: InsideOut Music
- Release date: 24 July 2020
Virus is Haken’s sixth album and the second half of a story that started on Vector two years earlier. Adam “Nolly” Getgood mixed it, and you can hear it immediately: the low end on “Prosthetic” is huge, the guitars of Richard Henshall and Charlie Griffiths lock into riffs that are closer to Meshuggah than to anything on The Mountain, and Ross Jennings still floats over the top as if nothing heavy were happening underneath him.
What makes it work is how much variety the band squeezes into eleven tracks without losing the thread. “Invasion” is all syncopated stomp and Diego Tejeida’s keyboard textures. “Carousel” runs past ten minutes and keeps turning corners. “Canary Yellow” drops the weight entirely for something close to a ballad, and it might be the most affecting song on the album.
The five-part “Messiah Complex” suite is where they let the prog nerd in them off the leash, five movements running into each other until “Ectobius Rex” brings the whole thing crashing down. It is a lot to take in, and a couple of passages feel like cleverness for its own sake. Still, few bands in this genre write this tightly at this level of complexity.
Best tracks:
Prosthetic
Invasion
Carousel
Canary Yellow
Author’s rating: 8.9/10
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