Track By Tracks: HAVEN - Causes (2025)

Musically this record was heavily built on the guitar tuning that we introduced while writing the songs.

Changing from standard low B tuning to a dropped A tuning added an enormous heaviness and rough “growl” to the strings while maintaining the general style that we established throughout our earlier releases.

It additionally draws from modern metal styles without really adding to that canon of bands. Combining dense heaviness, screaming, and growling vocals with very soft, quiet, and almost soothing moments and clean vocals builds the foundation of this music. Just like the album artwork its songs work heavily with that arc of tension.

The thematic arc of the record touches on questions around needs and desires, a consequence of action, accountability, and free will, conditioning of the mind, and reflection of all that. The title “CAUSES” was therefore chosen, because the word describes the origin of all our experiences, but also a continuation of such, as well as an influence on our surroundings with the deeds one chooses to do or is made to do.

The overlying cycle and inevitability of it is captured by the first and last phrase of the record: All will take from all, and all will flow back into all.

Track by Track:

1. IDOL:

The opening song musically and thematically starts with a heavy and direct tone. Engulfed in dissonant, chaotic riffs and abrupt sonic changes lie themes of self-idolization, the need for guidance, trust, and dependence, as well as ego and the search for meaning. The lyrics tell a perspective of realizing that in the end, it is only ourselves that can judge us.

The words point to the egotistical side of thinking, while also revealing the fact that without an idol and guidance to look to, we can not function - however that figure or idea may be shaping up in each of our lives and manifest itself in our beliefs and minds. The song is also the first appearance of an inner voice, a siren, which keeps us safe in our thoughts - confirming our beliefs and notions of the world and ourselves.

2. CAUSES:

The title track of the album starts ominous and quiet and later erupts in powerful and dynamic ways while keeping a steady base around a heightened hook.

The music here reflects the journey of discovery in the lyrics, which goes from early experiences of learning and realization towards manifestation and questioning of such. The song therefore describes the whole arc of the other lyrics of the album in a broader way, admitting to inherent, essential needs and ending with a want for peace and absolution.

3. LEASH:

Presenting itself as a tour-de-force through heaviness and chaos with a moment of introspective and tranquility in between, the grimmest song of the record deals with themes of tradition, conditioning, dependence, and heritage of ideas and beliefs. While the inner voice emerges to ask a core question, the song touches on the consequence of all mentioned things, revealing the reactive and prejudging side of human behavior, using the symbol of a leash to state our tendency to stay bound to and rely on the notions we form and the suasions that have been passed on to us.

4. WESEN:

Starting the second half of the record is an ambient and private part of music.

Using German words and a speaking voice to tell an inner thought process, reforming as a note to an unspecified essential entity - a friend, a mentor, a lover, a self - with the inner voice reappearing to unveil an enlightened, relentless but peaceful truth.

5. RUE:

Using a rare word for “repentance” as its title and stemming from a very personal experience, this song depicts the struggle with acceptance and accountability of done deeds. Questioning how the way things went came together, searching for a way to cope with the consequences that present themselves and the marks that are left on oneself and everyone affected - wishing them peace and coming to terms with forgiveness left in question.

6. THEIA:

Lending itself the name of a mythical planet that once collided with Earth to create its axial tilt and therefore enabling seasons and life as it is, this song opens its eyes towards the broader and universal picture of things being.

With it comes a realization of wonder about the overlying process, bigger than the individual and all species roaming the earth.

7. ANKOU:

Bearer of this song's title is a figure of Breton folklore, a personification of death, and a keeper of its integrity and peace. Comprehension of the frailty of life and the intangibility of death as a whole are central themes of this song while yearning for a sense of given existence and a memorable impact with an ability to live freely and with honesty.

Embedded in a partially uplifting tone of music, with underlying parts of darkness this piece strives for the attainment of an absolution, while finding the absolution may be in trying to let go of such yearning and accepting the inevitability of the cycle.