By Jase Walker
Continuing the trend of “March 2023 is mental”, Haken and Between The Buried And Me finally bring their rearranged tour to Manchester and after getting my teeth stuck into BTBAM’s latest, ‘Colours II’, and Haken’s latest, ‘Fauna’, I couldn’t be more excited for it! Not only that but we’ve got Cryptodira in support who I saw absolutely destroy Manchester Club Academy a few years back with Animals As Leaders and Car Bomb.
Quite early as far as set times go, Cryptodira get started shortly after doors and are currently ripping it up right from the first moment with a cataclysmic onslaught of bizarre time signatures and busy riffage. The sound balance is fantastic though, the bottom end of the show is bloody thunderous yet the vocals punch right through so we’re off to a pretty good start! I do love some mathcore and when Cryptodira really leans into it with stop/start playing it shows off how incredibly tight their playing is and sounding as good as this just adds up to a brilliant live show on the whole.
Every bit as brutal as they are virtuoso players, the mix of intensely discordant riffing, the mix of cleans and uncleans, and drums that relentlessly bear down on the audience all the way feels like teetering on the precipice of insanity yet never quite giving in. At one point even hitting a breakdown where one of the guitarists steadily loosens his lowest string with every beat, beautiful.
With barely enough time to grab a pint as the changeover’s so bloody quick, I’ve returned after missing the opening to BTBAM‘s set which is a shame but oh well, I’m here for the main chunk which is the important part! Outstandingly intense as they have been every time I’ve seen them prior, the constant jumping between different rhythms and the near constant onslaught of bizarre melodies and screams never fail to impress.
The endurance BTBAM shows to be able to run at 110 per cent for their set is incredible, these are not people who have “break” moments in their shows, well unless you count their bizarre smash-cuts to bossa novas, waltzes, or swing. Honestly anything goes with BTBAM, no genre is really off-limits with their style yet it fits in so naturally!
Seeing Tommy on vocals jump onto his keyboard for more subtle melodic singing and then dive off and act almost demonic screaming at the audience is brilliantly entertaining too. Not only that but we get a brief guest vocal spot, sadly I don’t quite recognise them (don’t kill me), great all the same however. In amongst the chaos, quick drum solos, bass solos, guitar solos, you name it, it’s in there. BTBAM are anything but subtle in any part of their live show, a veritable maelstrom of incredible musical ability and outrageous application of it. As with some other American bands that have come through Manchester recently, a quick dig at the musical history of Manchester with “this one’s called Champagne Supernova” is followed by a song that is most definitely not Oasis.
BTBAM in many parts of their set show just how much of an incredible influence Rush has been on their sound as well as performance. The juxtaposition of spacey breaks in their songs mixed with almost turbo-funk makes me feel like I’m watching them cover an avant-garde version of ‘Tom Sawyer’. But ultimately finishing with one of my favourites, ‘Voice Of Trespass’, a delicious swing number with the full force of BTBAMs insanity behind it, I’m busy skanking meanwhile the crowd near me is more concerned with kicking the ever living shit out of each other in the pit. BTBAM smashed it again!
Haken introduce themselves with ‘Who Let The Dogs Out’ before kicking into the signature aggressive riff intro for ‘Prosthetic’, given the timing of this tour I’m expecting them to work more heavily with ‘Virus’ than ‘Fauna‘ but here’s hoping for a subsequent ‘Fauna’ tour eh? All sporting tacky Hawaiian shirts, it’s time to get stuck into one of my favourite bands!
Clearly the crowd here’s been waiting for the same as well, the chorus of voices singing back the main vocal lines is every bit as loud as my own. The thunderous sound they’ve got tonight is sublime and delivers the cacophonous euphoria that Haken are capable of, and seeing them finally on a stage of this size in Manchester is something I’ve been waiting to experience for years now.
At least we’re getting some love for ‘Fauna’ though with ‘The Alphabet Of Me’, with its deep Bladerunner references. Clearly everyone else here is enamoured with ‘Faun’a as they keenly chime in on the chant. During Haken’s extended instrumental breaks, they really shine with their incredible musical skill, whether it’s bizarre rhythmic work or outrageous bouncing off one-another in synchronicity. Another ‘Fauna’ banger, ‘Taurus’, certainly sees the crowd running amok to say the least! I am overjoyed how good these new songs sound live and I’m thirsting for a proper ‘Fauna’ set at some point, they sound bloody superb, but not before we give ‘Affinity’ some love in the form of ‘The Endless Knot’! A surprising ‘Fauna’ addition though, ‘Lovebite’, which admittedly wasn’t what I expected to find it’s way into this set but is definitely welcome for me anyway, even if the audience seems a bit nonplussed on the whole.
‘Carousel’ works as an introduction to Haken’s “closer” as we’re now about to get stuck into one of the single biggest chunks of solid music I think I’ve seen at a Haken show. The remainder of the set is quite literally ‘Messiah Complex’ start to finish, the massive epic that takes up the majority of their ‘Virus’ album and I would think unlikely to ever be played in this sort of capacity ever again.
Given the, for lack of a better term, disruption over the last three years or so, it was to be expected that this would lean very heavily on ‘Virus’ despite having dropped a new album within the last month so this set’s probably already been on the cards for a while. And while I probably wasn’t the keenest on ‘Virus’, I don’t regret having seen them blast through one of the biggest prog metal epics I’ve seen on an album for years. Haken have shown they’ve got what it takes to command bigger stages with this tour and the sales for almost every date they’ve had on this tour support that notion.
A true force to be reckoned with and seeing them on a stage of this size finally is a real treat. Easily one of the most innovative and unique bands in modern prog metal and they’re finally commanding audience sizes they truly deserve. Long live Haken!