Progressive rockers, Haken, are set to release their seventh studio album, Fauna, the group’s most genre-busting and conceptually fascinating album to date, on March 3. Today, the band celebrate Valentine’s Day with the launch of their latest single, "Lovebite".
Ross Jennings says this about the track: “What better song to put out on this fine Valentine’s Day than one about the Black Widow Spider mating ritual… This is the Phil Collins inspired upbeat love song in 11/8 with Cannibal Corpse inspired lyrics that you never knew you needed!”
Fauna sees the band exploring new ideas conceptually as Ross Jennings states, “The premise of the album when we started writing it was that every song would have an animal assigned to it. They all have something related to the animal kingdom that we could write about, but they also connect to the human world. Each track has layers, and some of them are more obvious than others.”
“It reminds me of 'The Mountain',” adds guitarist and fellow founder Richard Henshall. “There, we had the idea of not really a narrative-based album, but more the concept of climbing a mountain and overcoming the obstacles along the way. Then we took that and thought about how it could relate to our everyday lives. All of Fauna’s animals relate to us, personally.”
Fauna also marks the return of keyboard player Peter Jones, whose sounds can be heard permeating the entire album. “What Pete’s brought sonically to the band has played a massive role in why we do have a lot of new sounds on this record,” says Ross. “It’s always a new dynamic when there’s a change in personnel, and this is a fresh and reviving one. It’s certainly helped proximity-wise, with Pete being in the country: Pete and Ray [Hearne, Haken’s drummer] would be at Rich’s place and they’d just start jamming. That’s really key to how the songs start.”
Fauna will be available on several formats, including Ltd 2CD (incl. instrumentals), Standard CD, Gatefold 2LP & as Digital Album. The albums stunningly detailed artwork was created by Dan Goldsworthy (Charlie Griffiths, Sylosis).
Pre-order here.
Tracklisting:
"Taurus"
"Nightingale"
"The Alphabet Of Me"
"Sempiternal Beings"
"Beneath The White Rainbow"
"Island In The Clouds"
"Lovebite"
"Elephants Never Forget"
"Eyes Of Ebony"
"Taurus" video:
"The Alphabet Of Me" video:
"Nightingale" video:
Haken recently announced a co-headline tour with Between The Buried & Me in Europe for early 2023, with support from Cryptodira. These will be the first dates in support of Fauna, find the full list of dates here.
Haken are:
Ross Jennings
Richard Henshall
Charlie Griffiths
Pete Jones
Conner Green
Ray Hearne
