AQUARIUS

I can safely say this is the second best Haken album. Featuring colossal compositions, wonderful (and when I say wonderful, I mean it) melodies and choruses, Aquarius is truly an excellent effort from this band. Although I must say that the concept of the story itself is very vague and bizarre: a man finds a siren, and he sells her to a circus, then they find out that if they don't kill the siren, a deluge with destroy planet earth (wtf).

With seven tracks and a runtime of 72 minutes, you are obviously going to expect lengthy tracks. Songs like The Point Of No Return showcase Haken doing everything that they're good at, like memorable melodies and short but concise solo sections. Streams features a fun breakdown near the middle. Aquarium is one of my favorites, absolutely wonderful main verse and chorus, even if Ross sounds like he's trying too hard to hit the notes in the latter one. Sun is a beautiful ballad that works as a great break from the rest of the album.

That leaves us with the closing 17-minute epic, Celestial Elixir. Its first four minutes feature reprises from previous tracks, the next four minutes present the main verse and the main chorus, which is one of the most beautiful choruses I've ever heard. After that, the band does a circus themed instrumental section with fun guitar solos. Finally near the end the chorus and verse get reprised, concluding the song. Very cohesive track, but works well.

Excellent album! I recommend it to both, prog rock fans and prog metal fans. Four stars.

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