AQUARIUS

When I first listened to Haken, I remember being very impressed. However after a few more times of listening to the album, I started to notice things that I really did not agree with. Their debut album Aquarius has seven lengthy tracks on it, only three of them being under ten minutes, and follows some sort of under water, sci-fi storyline. The track listing goes, 1-The Point of no Return/11:34, 2-Streams/10:21, 3-Aqarium/10:47, 4-Eternal Rain/6:50, 5-Drowning in the Flood/9:35, 6-Sun/7:27, 7-Celestial Elixir/17:04. Every song on the album has its shining moments, but then all of the sudden we hear death metal vocals (frankly, very mediocre death metal vocals that he surely was not able to pull off). Then all of the sudden, in the middle of a very nice and epic sounding section of the song, comes in some sort of strange circus jazz music that really kills the mood. This band has some superb talent and without a doubt, some serious potential, but it seems to me that they are simply trying too hard to sound like something else, also trying weird things that doesn't fit well with the overall music. The singer can be very good at points but then once again, he just tries lots of things on the album that he is not capable of. In my opinion, his best performance is on track four "Eternal Rain" (also the song I believe to be the best on the album). His vocals were quite great throughout the whole song. But then in the next track "Drowning in the Flood", he tries to do some weird grunty voice. The rest of the guys in the band all do a great job and are very talented. I'm sure anyone that hears the album will not help but hear an extremely evident Dream Theater influence, along with some other influences. Many People claimed it to be the best prog album of 2010, which I see as a huge overstatement, but it really was not all that bad. Regardless of the flaws I saw, I see it as a good first attempt and I also see a band with enormous potential to be great.