RICHARD HENSHALL

The Cocoon Self-releaSed Haken’s six-string swordsman embarks on a solo mission.

With Haken still firmly in the ascendancy, guitarist Richard Henshall can release his first solo album secure in the knowledge that lots of people will want to hear it. Pleasingly, he hasn’t taken the obvious road to semi-reflected glory here. Fans will definitely recognise both his tone and his trickery, and more sensitive fans may prefer The Cocoon’s overtly proggy vibe over the prog metal precision of Haken’s recent Vector album. This is a prog metal record to its fingertips, as one might expect (and hope).

But this is also a record full of subtle wonkiness and melodic ingenuity. The epic tracks are the most revealing: Cocoon itself, which veers from skittering electro-rock syncopation and futuristic sheen to flurries of wild, brakesoff jazz metal and elegiac, dreamy piano interludes. Similarly, Twisted Shadows is a blur of brilliant ideas and left-brain riffing; a loose-limbed sprawl, apparently conjured from improvisation, but that Henshall has fashioned into an immersive epic worthy of Between The Buried And Me at their extravagant best, with the added thrill of a cameo from Dream Theater’s Jordan Rudess. He can do simple and subtle too: Limbo is four minutes of gorgeous, serene post-rock fragility that will give your heartstrings a robust yank. It’s obvious from that brief moment alone that Henshall is fully in tune with both the modern prog way of doing things and the old school spirit of liberated artistry. The soft-focus throb of the post-djent generation is evident in Silken Chains, which begins with the same sense of dream-like drift that made Disperse’s Foreword so instantly bewitching before veering off into jarring, skewed rhythms and askance vocal effects. But rather than rely on tried and tested formulae, the expansive likes of Lunar Room take circuitous routes to unfamiliar destinations. The latter is a masterclass in tension built, as a steadily escalating sense of panic consumes the song’s first half, before a beautifully mellifluous solo from the man himself restores sanity over an insistent tech metal strut.

After 40-plus minutes of frequently brain-spinning intricacy and sideways songwriting, the closing Afterglow is arguably The Cocoon’s most revealing moment. Effortlessly elegant but underpinned by the slow moan of sadness, it’s a beautiful, timeless piece of music that puts Henshall’s mercurial but finessed gifts under a microscope, with amorphous ambience and monochrome melancholy building to a surging, disconsolate crescendo. Not that fans of the guitarist’s more explosive abilities are poorly served here: left to his own devices, the Haken man has got all bases covered and appears to be mid-hot streak.

IN TUNE WITH MODERN PROG AND OLD SCHOOL LIBERATED ARTISTRY.