Progressive Nation: Haken, Leprous And Maschine Prepare For UK And Ireland Trek
Monday, 20 October 2014
Written by Alec Chillingworth
While progressive music is largely viewed as the nerdy, under-appreciated brainiac in the corner of the room, it remains an undying force in the metal genre. Whether you’re talking Opeth entrenching themselves in the UK Top 40, Devin Townsend selling out the Royal Albert Hall or Rush just going about their day-to-day lives, there remains a huge demand for concept albums and funny time signatures.
Young hopefuls Haken, Leprous and Maschine join forces this week for a nine-date trek across the UK and we interrogated them beforehand to get the skinny on all things widdly.
First up are Haken. An imminent EP of re-recorded songs looms large [spoiler: it rocks] and the band are soon to follow it up with a new studio release. We chatted with guitarist Charlie Griffiths.
How's the new record shaping up? Is there anything you can shed light on regarding the musical direction or concept?
We're taking a slightly different writing approach with album four. Previously, we've always demoed ideas individually, then we'd get together and work on them as a group. This time, we're starting with a blank slate and writing from scratch with us all in the same room, jamming, experimenting and generating ideas in a more organic way.
We've got an idea for an overarching theme and some cool musical concepts we want to try, but we're not planning on doing a 'storyline' kind of concept album. It's still early days, so even we don't know how it will turn out.
What can people expect from your show if they come down for the tour?
We're thrilled to be sharing the stage with Maschine and Leprous. 'Coal' [Leprous album] was one of my favourite albums of 2013, so personally I'm extremely excited to see them play. We're going to be visiting parts of the UK and Ireland that we've never been to before, so we'll try to balance the set with some old favourites as well as bringing things right up to date with a couple of tracks from the 'Restoration' EP.
Next, we have ØysteinLandsverk of Norwegian genre-benders Leprous, who peddle an avant-garde concoction of black, death and progressive metal. They've recently become known as the stunning backing band for Emperor main-man Ihsahn's solo shows.
Earlier in the year, you stated via Facebook that you were working on new material. How's that going?
It's going very well, actually. We've been working on new material for quite a while now. Initially we had 30 songs that were rough sketches we wanted to try out, with the plan of early elimination of songs that we found not to have the desired potential. We thus avoided spending lots of time on songs that weren't going anywhere.
Having been through this initial 'filtering' phase, we are now left with about 15 songs that we've been putting a lot more effort into. We are still not sure how many of them we will end up with [on the new album]. However, we are not far away from finalising our songs, so we will start recording the drums in November. After that, we'll continue doing the other instruments, mixing etc. So, we're definitely not resting on our laurels.
What sort of stuff did you learn from touring as the backing band for an artist as established as Ihsahn?
Well – to be pedantic – it wasn't really touring, but a whole lot of independent shows. The opportunity to play for Ihsahn came at a very good time in our career, being young and inexperienced. We took the job very seriously though, and practised our asses off to make the best possible live shows we could. Lots of the Ihsahn material is quite technical, so we really had to put a lot of work into it.
At the time, we had only released one album, and being able to play all the big summer festivals in Europe was awesome. Playing these festivals and seeing other bands as well got us really conscious about our own expression in Leprous. We started taking the aesthetics and how we presented ourselves on stage just as seriously as the technical aspect of playing, which also improved a lot. This has only escalated through the years and we try to be conscious about every part of the band to deliver a consistent expression that stands out from the rest.
Your tour next month is your biggest run over here run to date. Do you think the UK and Ireland is finally catching on to what you're doing?
We hope so. We've been touring mainland Europe extensively – each fall since 2010 – but have only had a few single shows in the UK. However, our shows in London on our previous tours have definitely been [some] of the most successful, so we felt it was time to build a small tour. We'll be going out with Haken playing nine shows, and I think that's going to help a lot with reaching out to more potential fans.
Haken have established themselves as a name within the scene and I think the two of us together will be a really cool package for people to see. We just came back from our first US tour ever and it was quite successful, so we're looking forward to bringing a great set to people in the UK as well. Hopefully this round of shows will enable us to include some more UK dates on future tours.
And finally, we had the mighty Luke Machin, vocalist and gun-slinger for Maschine and a man who has played with a few genuine legends. Not content with this, Machin assembled his own troupe to record Maschine’s debut, 'Rubidium'.
So far, how have you found the response to 'Rubidium'?
It’s been great – we couldn’t have asked for anything more. Reviews have been more than positive, fans have really taken to the album and even more so after several listens. It’s an album you can keep on finding new parts and melodies that you may not have heard first time around.
Apart from your lovely band mates (obviously), who has been your favourite person to play with and why?
Since I was a child I’ve always watched VHS tapes of Francis Dunnery playing onstage with It Bites – he was and still is my axe hero. On the video tapes, the camera would film Francis from stage right looking up at him and his guitar, so I’ve always had a mental image of that imprinted into my head. When I got to know Francis after going to a number of his shows as a kid, around four years ago he asked me to play on his latest album and get up onstage with him as a guest for an old It Bites track.
He set me up to the right of him, so now I was playing onstage with my axe hero, which you would think would be the scariest thing in the world. But, for the reason which I can only explain as that imprinted memory as one of my earliest visions, it was the most natural thing in the world and I got to do it again another three nights on his tour. So that was certainly a bucket list moment crossed off for me.
You've shared the stage with Robert Plant and Jeff Beck – if you could play for anyone else, who would it be and why?
Honestly, I can’t think of anyone else I’d like to perform with. I’m at a stage now where I’d like to perform in front of great crowds at great venues with my band. I’ve been massively lucky enough to perform with a handful of my heroes like Francis, Daniel Gildenlow and Jeff Beck. I’ve thought about performing onstage with Guthrie Govan but what would I be doing – playing rhythm guitar? I’m hugely grateful to have had these experiences and now I’m looking forward to experiencing what my heroes experienced in their early years: playing fresh, new music to great audiences in great venues.
Haken Upcoming Tour Dates are as follows:
Thu October 23 2014 - LONDON Garage
Fri October 24 2014 - LEAMINGTON SPA Assembly
Sun October 26 2014 - BRISTOL Fleece
Mon October 27 2014 - WOLVERHAMPTON Robin 2
Wed October 29 2014 - DUBLIN Village
Thu October 30 2014 - LIVERPOOL O2 Academy Liverpool
Fri October 31 2014 - MANCHESTER Academy
Sat November 01 2014 - EDINBURGH Liquid Room
Sun November 02 2014 - YORK York Duchess
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