Progressive rockers Haken recently announced their seventh studio album Fauna, the group’s most genre-busting and conceptually fascinating album to date, will be released on March 3, 2023. The third single and music video for “Taurus” – produced by Crystal Spotlight – is available below.

Ross Jennings says this about the track:

“With such a diverse and eclectic array of material on Fauna, it was important for us to include a piece of music that represented the metallic edge of our sound which was exploited predominantly on ‘Vector’ & ‘Virus’, with our focus being on hard hitting riffs in odd time signatures.

“The song’s lyrics were written roughly at the same time we all started hearing about the devastation and crisis happening in Ukraine. I was already writing the piece based on the annual migration of the wildebeests with strong references to people travelling in herds and strength in numbers. Suddenly I realised I had an anchor for what the song could be about and knowing this gives it all the more emotional weight; We’re all on some sort of journey towards salvation or enlightenment. Sometimes out of choice or not, we need to leave the past behind us and make new beginnings. We only have each other, and belief and hope are our strongest allies.”

Haken recently announced tour dates for their North American Fauna Expedition for 2023. The tour will begin on May 3 in Nashville, TN and conclude on June 3 in Chicago, IL.  Arch Echo will be joining the run as support.

The band have issued this message for fans: "We had such a great time in North America earlier this year, and can't wait to return for a headline tour with our new album - Fauna!"

Tour dates:

May
3 - Nashville, TN - TBA
4 - Cleveland, OH - House of Blues
5 - Toronto, ON - Opera House
6 - Montreal, QC - Corona Theater
7 - Quebec City, QC - Imperial Bell
9 - Boston, MA - Paradise
10 - Philadelphia, PA - TLA
11 - New York City, NY - Le Poisson Rouge
12 - Washington, DC - The Black Cat
13 - Charlotte, NC - Underground
15 - Fort Lauderdale, FL - Culture Room
16 - Orlando, FL - The Beacham
17 - Atlanta, GA - Terminal West
19 - Dallas, TX - Granada Theater
20 - Austin, TX - Come and Take it Live
21 - El Paso, TX - Lowbrow Palace
22 - Phoenix, AZ - The Nile
23 - San Diego, CA - Brick by Brick
24 - Los Angeles, CA - Regent Theater
25 - San Francisco, CA - August Hall
26 - Portland, OR - Hawthorne Theater
27 - Seattle, WA - Neptune Theater
28 - Vancouver, BC - Rickshaw Theater
30 - Salt Lake City, UT - Commonwealth Room
31 - Denver, CO - Gothic Theater

June
1 - Lawrence, KS - Granada Theater
2 - Minneapolis, MN - Fine Line
3 - Chicago, IL - Concord Music Hall

Fauna sees the band exploring new ideas conceptually as Ross Jennings states, “The premise of the album when we started writing it was that every song would have an animal assigned to it. They all have something related to the animal kingdom that we could write about, but they also connect to the human world. Each track has layers, and some of them are more obvious than others.”

“It reminds me of 'The Mountain',” adds guitarist and fellow founder Richard Henshall. “There, we had the idea of not really a narrative-based album, but more the concept of climbing a mountain and overcoming the obstacles along the way. Then we took that and thought about how it could relate to our everyday lives. All of Fauna’s animals relate to us, personally.”

Fauna also marks the return of keyboard player Peter Jones, whose sounds can be heard permeating the entire album. “What Pete’s brought sonically to the band has played a massive role in why we do have a lot of new sounds on this record,” says Ross. “It’s always a new dynamic when there’s a change in personnel, and this is a fresh and reviving one. It’s certainly helped proximity-wise, with Pete being in the country: Pete and Ray [Hearne, Haken’s drummer] would be at Rich’s place and they’d just start jamming. That’s really key to how the songs start.”

Fauna will be available on several formats, including Ltd 2CD (incl. instrumentals), Standard CD, Gatefold 2LP & as Digital Album. The albums stunningly detailed artwork was created by Dan Goldsworthy (Charlie Griffiths, Sylosis).

Pre-order here.

Tracklisting:

"Taurus"
"Nightingale"
"The Alphabet Of Me"
"Sempiternal Beings"
"Beneath The White Rainbow"
"Island In The Clouds"
"Lovebite"
"Elephants Never Forget"
"Eyes Of Ebony"

"The Alphabet Of Me" video:

"Nightingale" video:

Haken recently announced a co-headline tour with Between The Buried & Me in Europe for early 2023, with support from Cryptodira. These will be the first dates in support of Fauna, find the full list of dates here.

Haken are:

Ross Jennings
Richard Henshall
Charlie Griffiths
Pete Jones
Conner Green
Ray Hearne