Haken @ O2 Shepard's Bush Empire (2023)

27 Mar, 2023

26/03/2023

Cryptodira

It took me hyping this show up for me to check this band out much sooner than I likely would have otherwise, which shouldn't have to be the case, because I'm super glad I checked them out properly. I'd heard of them originally from SanityTheorist's FFO Between the Buried and Me list and uhhhh yeah! As someone who loves BTBAM as much as I do, I hear a lot of what I love about BTBAM in this band's music too. I had made a fair few comparisons before between Cryptodira and BTBAM, as well as Intronaut in places, but somehow it took me seeing them live to notice another significant parallel... The Dillinger Escape Plan! Go-to band for live Mathcore energy of course and not without reason, but it's not as though Cryptodira are riding massively off of pure imitation or cliches. They've just got something real good brewing with this mixture of stuff, as that often tends to be the case. I'm not saying they're nearly as crazy live as a band like Dillinger either, it just owns to see the kinda youthful manic energy Cryptodira display when performing music like this.

'The Blame for Being Alive' and 'Something Other Than Sacrifice' are my two absolute favourite songs of theirs, so it especially owned to see them playing those two. 'Hyperwealth' is also a really fun track! I'd be more gutted about only seeing them play for 30 minutes, but I'll take all that I can get. I'm not sure BTBAM and Haken could've picked a better band to open for them tbh

7/10 (Very good!/10)

Between the Buried and Me

Really good setlist and really good set, all things considered! Dustie Waring wasn't able to show up in person on this tour in general because he's still been trying to recover from a long term injury of his. His pre-recorded parts could be heard tho still, which makes a positive difference still methinks, given the circumstances.

I was mostly looking forward to seeing BTBAM play Colors II material. Nothing before The Parallax II on this setlist. Hell, really, it's like one song from each that, Coma Ecliptic, and Automata, and 5 songs from Colors II. Of course, if Colors II wasn't as good as it is, I'd cry "bollocks", or just simply not feel so compelled to go and see them like it was admittedly the case for when they toured for the Coma Ecliptic album. The main thing I'd change about this setlist would be to include 'The Double Helix of Extinction', because I know that'd go fucking hard as hell live.

7.5/10 (Very good!/10)

Haken

When I got a ticket to see Haken originally, they were going to play Vector and Virus in full back to back. That would've been great of course, but given they pushed the show back a year or two and it shifted into part of a co-headline tour with Between the Buried and Me with Cryptodira opening... I mean, I'll still take it, of course! Also, yay for getting to see BTBAM live again when I originally only payed for a ticket to see Haken alone.

First off, why did Haken start their set by blasting 'Who Let the Dogs Out' over the PA? I don't even know what more to say about that, just... huh?

I wasn't quite as into Fauna as I was Vector and Virus especially... hell, to be completely frank, I still think it's their weakest since Aquarius. Somehow they still ended up with a really good setlist here, if only mainly for how Virus-heavy it is. 'Prosthetic', 'Invasion', 'Carousel', AND fucking 'Messiah Complex'? Really, there's no way I could ask for more than that if that's what I'm getting when I see them! 'The Architect' and 'Visions' are the other songs of theirs I consider big favourites that weren't represented here, but those songs are... also long.

Only one song from each The Mountain and Affinity... Not bad picks either. Only 3 songs from Fauna! No 'Nightingale', but there is 'Taurus' which is also good... The other 2 songs there are the ones I liked the least from Fauna. Oh way ho. Even still, that didn't ruin it for me at all really, and I don't really care enough about the album to go "wahhhh they could've played (insert any other track from the album)". I don't give a shit. They played 'Carousel' and 'Messiah Complex' back to back. I'm happy!

I also didn't fully realise until over halfway through the set that the keyboardist is different. I had no fucking clue that Diego Tejeida wasn't in the band anymore and had been replaced by their original keyboardist Peter Jones! Diego's not been in the band for the last two years??? Huh! You'd think I'd have been tipped off earlier by there being only one keyboard instead of at least three.

6.5/10 (Mostly pretty good/10)

#btbam #cryptodira #haken #seen live