Review Summary: Tiktaalika shows why Charlie Griffiths is my favorite Haken member
For the listeners of a band, we cannot entirely know who contributes what to a band's sound, composition, or aesthetics unless we directly asked them. Even then, it's not like we can embody the walls of a band's studio while they compose and perform their materials. So, the only thing that fans of rock and metal bands can infer is that each member generally guides the direction of their particular instrument, leaving the rest of the details a mystery.
It wasn't until the release of
Charlie Griffiths' debut solo album
Tiktaalika, that I had gotten into thinking more about this topic. When listening to this album, one can easily hear elements shared with
Haken; the band that has become a prog metal cornerstone, in part thanks to Griffiths' longtime contribution as a riff-aficionado. However, the musical style that
Charlie Griffiths has adjacent to
Haken is not the same as the musical style that
Richard Henshall's solo album has adjacent to
Haken. Now, this observation leads to novel conclusions. We can infer that the artist's identifying fingerprint they leave in their solo albums has implications for what contributions they make to their main band, and perhaps by extrapolation, we can try to imagine what the other members add to the band by thinking about what their sound would be like without the fingerprints of their members with solo albums.
Now that being said, we can use this principle when listening to the music in
Tiktaalika to make comparisons between the styles of
Charlie Griffiths and
Richard Henshall. Generally, Griffiths' fingerprint as a musician is much more centered around metal riffs which are influenced by the scenes of progressive metal, djent, thrash, and a little bit from avant-garde and heavy metal. In contrast, Henshall's fingerprint displays a greater variety of styles focused on progressive music in general; say in prog metal, prog rock, symphonic prog, a lot of jazz-fusion, and smaller hints of acoustic and ambient music. Stylistically, Griffiths writes his songs around building straightforward grooves which serve as highly effective hooks, while Henshall slowly builds his songs with subtle atmospheres and unexpected transitions. Henshall goes for epic, slow-burning songwriting techniques while Griffiths' songs live strictly in the moment. Henshall excels in the bigger picture, while Griffiths excels in the details. Consequently, the two work quite well together.
As you might already know,
Charlie Griffiths features a boatload of guest musicians on
Tiktaalika, especially a lot of guest vocalists who do exceptionally well in their performances. This contains members from
Between the Buried and Me,
Dream Theater,
Textures, and
Luna's Call which color
Tiktaalika with a variety of moods and emotions. When it comes to an evaluation of the guest musicians' technical performances, they check all the boxes. Their success is aided, no doubt, by Griffiths' melodic, layered,
Haken-esque vocal writing. However, most of the time the creative aspect of the vocal writing does sound noticeably derivative of
Devin Townsend Project,
Haken (which should come as no surprise), and on tracks two and nine,
Between the Buried and Me. In tracks like "In Alluvium" and "Dead in the Water" the
Devin Townsend impression by guest vocalist Vladimir Lalic becomes too obvious. Even though these are some of my favorite tracks on the album, they still lie in the shadow of greater projects. However, some folks have said that because these are some of the album's best tracks,
Tiktaalika would have been more unified as a whole if Lalic was the album's sole vocalist.
Tiktaalika shines the brightest when it gets down into the nitty-gritty of grooves and allows
Charlie Griffiths' top-tier melodic writing to prevail. These are tracks like the aforementioned "Dead in the Water" where the main, nearly avant-garde riff, supplemented by the saxophone, builds up with different varieties of the main groove and alternates into its climax where its detailed crescendo of harmonious elements consumes you. The writing reminds me of the "I bet you don't remember me" part from
Haken's "Visions" where the instrumentalists break into an aggressive musical interlude which also builds with the various conceptual interpretations of a core melody.
Other songs in this album prevail because of their strong vocals choruses, like "In Alluvium", "Luminous Beings", "Digging Deeper", and "Crawl Walk Run". This album generally succeeds because of its strong melodies, and Griffiths knows how long to ride them out to our satisfaction.
Ultimately, this album falls a bit short when it comes to judging its innovation and freshness in the scene. As others have pointed out before, Griffiths synthesizes elements from different bands that are currently trendy and successful in the scene without sounding all that unique himself. How can an artist not sound like a product of its time in the prog metal scene when they wear their
Devin Townsend,
BTBAM, and
Haken colors on their sleeves. This potential criticism that
Tiktaalika sounds like a generic modern prog metal amalgam could have been worse; any strong
Opeth,
Leprous, or
Periphery influences in this would have pushed this point over the edge.
Despite this minor downfall, this album is a songwriting colossus; surely, one of my favorites of the year so far. I am pleasantly surprised to see the kind of skills
Charlie Griffiths has both as a melodic songwriter and as a guitar virtuoso. Because of this, I'm going to look out for the clever tendencies that I appreciated from this album in the upcoming
Haken album. For the time being, this album is a monstrous predator amongst its competitors, however, I'm not sure how well the fossils of this album will stand against the passing of time. Though, from what I've heard in this album, I can say that Charlie Griffiths is my favorite
Haken member.
