Haag’s latest EP is the bountiful result of a 7-year long period of experimentation with instruments and arrangements resulting in 5 engaging and intricate pieces of instrumental prog rock that bridges the old with the new, with a distinctive melodic flair that is set to place Haag in a unique place among their few contemporaries.
A superb 4-piece rock outfit hailing from the Iranian capital Tehran, Haag is composed of Amirhossein Rezaei, band leader, drummer, and main songwriter, accompanied by his Brother Mohsen Rezaei, Kasra Jalali, and Hooman Mousavi. A word meaning spore in Persian, Haag’s compositions are expansive as they open up, showing more layers as the pieces progress. The 5 cuts on Haag the Huge are lengthy, taking their time to fully explore their nuanced rhythmic, melodic, and instrumental ideas.
In its core, Haag the Huge is an album of instrumental progressive rock that’s akin to the sound found in Pink Floyd’s rockier era, starting from their 1979’s The Wall and the pair of albums that followed it. From the focus on melodic guitar solos, buoyant and simplistic bass parts that are efficient in their notes but grand in their effect, and gentle and minimal beats that feature no small number of sudden twists and turns, making for engaging and gripping listens. ‘Glow in Blue’, the album’s centerpiece is a slow, groovy stunner with a hypnotic structure and an array of outstanding performances that best showcase what Haag are all about.
The 5 pieces on the EP are largely uniform in their sonic texture, making for a cohesive and immersive listening experience, but with compositions that go from the gentle, airy, and melodic like the aforementioned ‘Glow in Blue’, to the battering, hammer-fisted, and aggressive ‘Permeable Isolation’, and the funky, restrained, and syncopated title cut at the tail end of the album, Haag are also showcasing compositional range that further improves the graceful pacing and immersive nature of the experience.
Haag the Huge is an album that makes a stance for itself and for the set of talents behind its inception. It is clear that the guys that form Haag share a fantastic amount of musical chemistry that make for a delightfully rich and enjoyable listen. Haag the Huge is an involved and engaging EP that left us thirsty for more.
