Live Review: Haken, Orsome Welles, Windwaker

Melbourne act Windwaker slam out crisp, highly melodic and accessible metalcore with subtle-but-sweet use of symphonic sampling, numerous bass-drops and excellent lead guitar lines. They seem just a smidgeon nervous in this big room as they start their show. However, they slowly but surely warm to the task over the course of their 30-minute set, the last few tunes are absolutely howling and the building crowd respond in kind. In fact, this is metalcore at its most crowd-pleasing and Windwaker alert many a new heart and mind to their presence this evening.

Orsome Welles' ever-apocalyptic guitar sound heralds their arrival to the stage as they lace into Home Sweet Home. This band have been around for quite some time now, playing many great supports and headline sets of their own, and supreme confidence veritably drips off them. Orsome Welles absolutely own the stage this night, with the almost-vaudevillian figure of Michael Vincent Stowers shining like a beacon out front. Playing so many shows over the last few years has made them tighter than a clenched fist too, and the stop-start dynamics they regularly utilise are performed on a dime. The band's 45-minute set - which culminates in the rousing, celebratory Want You To Know - is like a compelling, melodic freight train.

Haken - what an absolute revelation! It's taken them ten years to get here and to state that they are worth the wait is the understatement of the last decade. Opening with Affinity.exe, the band take the 170 Russell crowd on a mind-bending journey across so many soundscapes, so many moods and dynamics, so many sounds, influences and styles that it's completely impossible to keep track. All one can do is sit back and enjoy the ride.

This band has technique flowing out of them like a tsunami, at times it is fusion-esque in its technicality as the band effortlessly display the chops of ridiculously skilled craftsmen. Haken have mastered prog metal, rock, pop, jazz, a cappella, ambience, experimental and plenty more, and the soaring vocals of Ross Jennings and his backers are the very personification of perfection. At the same time, they play with the type of raw and cathartic feel and emotion that sends shivers down your spine.

They are also the type of band with the audacity, imagination and nous to write, record and release a song that sounds like it was recorded and released in 1985, actually call it 1985 and have it work an absolute treat. And fourth song in, this is one of the tunes of the night.

The show is a sumptuous aural and visual spectacular, the set structured to deliver the greatest emotional impact and ebb and flow possible. After a one-hour-and-25-minute set proper, the crowd don't just scream for more, they demand more, and the band delivers. They give just a single encore, but in typical style, that single encore happens to be the transcendent 22-plus-minute epic Visions, which wrings every last drop of emotion out of band and audience alike.

Haken are undoubtedly one of the finest live bands on the planet, no exaggeration. Jennings howls, "Can we come back, Melbourne?" at the very end and the answer to that is the most resounding "YES!" imaginable. This band is a phenomenon.