A Welcome Return
Success is a funny thing. You could be at the very top of your game one minute and bottom of the pile the next. Fame is fickle and success variable and they make for two very uncertain factors when you have responsibilities and are probably why, after releasing the career defining album, Carpe Diem, Will Haven called it a day back in 2002.
After taking a three year hiatus and finally coming to there senses by reforming back in 2005, the band have spent the past two years making the comeback album of comeback albums with a little help from one of their friends.
Although seven years have passed since the release of Carpe Diem, it is still an album which is mentioned with revered tones. It allowed the band to stamp their sound around the world, garnering fans far and wide and allowed the band, more importantly, the critical acclaim that they deserved.
To make a follow up to what is regarded as an important, sound defining, genre bashing album is a difficult enough task, but as musical soundscapes have changed to much since the early noughties, to come back with their sound, of epically heavy, face melting power with some pretty impressive vocals amidst a sea of whiny voiced singers and indecipherable shouting and still stand out is a great achievement. Kids across the land should be made to listen to the Will Haven back catalogue, including this release, so they can see how real music is made.
The Hierophant still has that bone shaking intensity of previous albums, all the while retaining a handle on melody. It would be easy to make very lazy comparisons to describe the album as a heavier version of album’s producer Chino Moreno’s Deftones, but Will Haven have always sounded like, well, Will Haven. In the era of identikit bands all spewing out the same sort of guff as one another, it is refreshing to see a band retake their mantle with their original sound behind them and managing to simultaneously sound like they used to but so much more advanced and changed: they sounds as fresh and as vital as ever.
Time may have passed, fads have come and gone, haircuts have been in and out of style, but it is impressive to see that Will Haven still have that old magic and that they are as relevant and as important as ever: long may they reign.