Adaen appear to be a one-man progressive rock act hailing from Moscow, Russia (although details are a little sketchy) . Appearing on our radar following a review of the quite wonderful Reserve De Marche album, Adaen seem to have a number of releases available via Soundcloud, but for this review we will concern ourselves with the recently released two-track single. Featuring ‘My captain (the crying ship)’ and ‘No Trees No Sons No homes’, the single clocks in at an impressive seventeen minutes and covers a wide range of musical genres and styles with crushing riffs, multi-layered vocals and cacophonous percussion all coming clearly through a raw but nonetheless powerful mix.
First track ‘My captain (the crying ship)’ is a powerful beast that recalls Jane’s Addiction in its opening bars before mutating to take in elements of Muse, Radiohead and The Mars Volta. Adaen are, then, at the softer end of progressive metal, which means that the guitars are suitably crushing but the vocals are more restrained, raised in punky harmony but rarely breaking into a visceral blast of phlegm and fury. At ten minutes it’s a brave choice for a single, but then Adean don’t seem particularly concerned about meeting anyone’s expectations – a laudable integrity in a band – and the result is a powerful, surging, progressive rock track that showcases that you don’t need to explode in a blazing fury of uber-technical solos and overtly practiced musicianship to have a great song; which is not to say that Adean are not musically adept, simply that the music comes before the ability rather than after it.
Rather more furious is the opening blast of ‘No Trees No Sons No homes’ which has the oddest timing of any song I’ve heard with the music simulating a record slowing down before side-stepping off on a completely different tangent that’s part Muse, part Queen and takes in all manner of moods and feelings as the track ranges freely over a wide-spread sonic landscape. It’s a fascinating piece of work that shows great potential.
Overall a two-track single is a difficult manner in which to gauge the possibilities of a band whose ambitions are set so high but definitely Adean show a great deal of promise. There are two minor niggles – the first being a necessary offshoot of budget in that the production is very raw for this type of music. This is not necessarily bad, but certainly this style of overwrought prog benefits from a greater gloss than the band can afford to give it at the moment. The second is that the vocals (on track 2), at present, veer a little too closely to the Matt Bellamy school of things despite, on the first track, nods to greater diversity. This is something that the band will no doubt develop with time and, as stated earlier, it’s hard to judge too precisely based solely on two tracks. What is absolutely clear is that Adaen are inventive, interesting and have the potential to do great things. Available on SoundCloud (see link below) this is well worth checking out.
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