REVIEW: Haken - in a fever dream EP

Disappointing, no cap(s)

26:23 // July 17th, 2026 // Inside Out Music

I kind of like Sleep Token. They are cringe, they are obnoxious, but they are also kind of fun. I find their ability to fold rnb-infused djent breakdowns into Genesis-era Sonic the Hedgehog synths to be amusing and even admirable, and there are far, far worse avatars to act as Heavy Music ambassadors to the masses. Whatever qualifiers might exist to admit this are undeniably true and I admittedly know nothing of the lore or their off-stage exploits (I only do this with Cool, Unimpeachable Things like Coheed and Cambria), but guilty pleasures are for cowards, and I am nothing if not brave for confessing that I kind of enjoy an incredibly popular crossover act. There are no atheists in foxholes, and there is no good taste on Substack. So, I repeat, ten toes down: I kind of like Sleep Token.

That being said, I don’t like Haken as Sleep Token.

For the uninitiated, Haken are one of the best acts in progressive metal and have produced several modern classics with an impressive deployment of genre that spans anything from djent to Rocky montage synths. You would know none of this from scanning in a fever dream, an EP that cashes in the band’s personality for immediacy, with sputtering results. Teaming up with one of the producers who helped put Sleep Token on the map, the soundscapes within lean more monotonous than immersive, invoking a sense of dread insomuch as any trace of their memory is erased.

The big Es-Tee influence did not necessarily have to be a bad well to draw from. As blasphemous as it might seem, Haken already had a decent amount of overlap in so much as some atmospherics and tone selection with some of their heavier, modern-sounding selections but enough was dressed up to make it wholly distinct and much more ambitious. There’s a philosophical change here that finds the edges being sanded down without any of the color or personality to compensate. “delirium” sounds like a fairly transparent bid to soundtrack a Madden menu, for instance. It would make a strong case as the band’s worst song if it weren’t for “eclipsed by you” performing some sort of black magic to make its three minutes feel double that length with vacant tire-spinning and a nonsensical climax.

The remaining three songs provide stray moments of intrigue, but only comparatively so. The EP’s title track is the strongest of the bunch and provides nifty novelty when vocalist Ross Jennings breaks out some rarely deployed harsh vocals over the most core-style breakdown the band has maybe ever produced before being enveloped in a circus-y choir. Still, that description likely paints the song as more adventurous than the actual result and there is far too much build-up to justify the runtime. The same could be said with “bleeding sky,” which only really wakes up in the final minute or so. “lotus” kind of hits like Leonard Nimoy’s classic appearance on the Simpsons, returning the title track’s choir section with a very “well, my work here is done” wink, but it does help something from this experience stick around in the mind.

The lack of capital letters for in a fever dream unintentionally demonstrates the lack of excitement for the music within. It’s a bizarre misfire from Haken that can only really be explained by the recent departure of two longterm members, likely finding the band scrapping whatever in-progress material to hastily pivot. Whatever the impetus, this is one chapter that is okay to sleep through. Wake me up when it’s over.

4.0/10