Progressive rockers Haken are in the midst of a North American tour in support of their recently released album, Fauna. In March and April, the band performed live in Europe alongside Between The Buried & Me, and today they launch a video for the track "Lovebite", filmed live at their show in Paris, France at Alhambra on March 17th.
The band commented of the current North American run: "We've been having an incredible time out on our North American Fauna Expedition, playing a brand new setlist, visiting cities old and new for us, and meeting fans every night at the VIP experience. It's been a busy year of touring so far but it doesn't end here - with festivals in Europe over the summer and our Latin American Fauna Expedition later in the year there are still many opportunities to see us live!"
Haken has the following dates still to play, before returning to Europe for Summer festivals including: Download, Loudfest, Graspop, Tuska, Arctangent, as well as some select headline shows.
May
25 – August Hall - San Francisco, CA
26 – Hawthorne Theatre - Portland, OR
27 – Neptune Theatre - Seattle, WA
28 – Rickshaw Theatre - Vancouver, BC
30 – The Commonwealth Room - Salt Lake City, UT
31 – Gothic Theatre - Englewood, CO
June
1 – Granada Theater - Lawrence, KS
2 – Fine Line - Minneapolis, MN
3 – Concord Music Hall - Chicago, IL
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 is 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).
Order yours 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:
