Review: Charlie Griffiths – Tiktaalika

Style: Progressive Metal (mixed vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Haken, Devin Townsend Project, Between the Buried and Me, Pagan’s Mind, Dream Theater
Review by: Zach & Sebastian
Country: United Kingdom
Release date: 17 June , 2022

Zach:
You guys wanna know what kind of kid I was? I was the dinosaur kid. I could name you every single dinosaur in existence. I had multiple encyclopedias that had words far too big for my little mind to pronounce, like Tiktaalika, and I butchered them anyway. You know why? Because dinosaurs didn’t give a single fuck about how to pronounce their own names, because they’re that cool. 

Besides my love of dinosaurs, this is about my love of Haken, and Charlie Griffiths has shown plenty of his talent in that band alone. But a side project centered around one important band member always leaves room for worry. It could be Haunted Shores, or it could be Culak, thankfully, I think we’ve ended up with the former. 

Right off the bat, it’s about dinosaurs, so the lyrics are automatically cool. But how about the music itself? Well, the answer is pretty much the same. Barring the obvious Haken influences, Charlie’s riffing ranges from BTBAM chaos to Devin Townsend atmosphere. But this isn’t the guitarist’s solo album where the album might as well be a 40-minute solo set to a backing track. The drums, keyboards, and sax all have their place in these songs, and Charlie knows when to cut back and give them their moments to shine.

However, this is a guitarist’s solo album. So, you better believe the riffs and solos are stronger than you can believe. ‘Arctic Cemetery’s atmosphere perfectly complements the one and only Tommy Giles-Rogers Jr’s vocals perfectly, starting with an expert build up into something that wouldn’t sound out of place in a less djent-y Virus. It becomes abundantly clear after the first two songs what kind of album this is.

A prog epic, split up into nine parts. With all the bombast, ebbs and flows that could only come out of someone in Haken. When you hit that moment around the 1:50 mark in ‘In Alluvium’, it’s like a cathartic release after the first three tracks of buildup. I even thought that a Deconstruction-era Devin Townsend song snuck its way into my queue when it came on. But it’s just this album being completely unpredictable and versatile. Like any good prog album should be.

Prog has sort of found a certain “sound” in the past decade or so, which Haken has been a massive contributor to. And it’s very easy to write Tiktaalika off as another one of the 5 billion prog-jects that seemingly come out every day. But Charlie Griffiths’ songwriting is what elevates this album high above the sludge.

I never felt that songs ran too long or too short. Every song seemed to have the perfect amount of breathing room, and even though each song transitions into the next, the insane amount of creativity between all nine songs made all of them standouts. And this album took me a few listens to really click, just like every Haken album ever. But believe me, between the lyrical callbacks and riffs, it makes it beyond worth it.

Griffiths and crew’s songwriting being at the top of their game, the vocal performances are absolutely fantastic as well, and it’d be a shame not to dedicate a small portion to talking about them. I’ve already fanboyed about Tommy Rogers, but everyone deserves some praise here. Daniel De Jongh, Vladimir Lalic, and Neil Purdy all sound at the top of their game here, with Lalic’s songs being standouts to me.

So, what’s there not to like? Honestly, not much. This is Haken-BTBAM-Devin Townsend all rolled into one prog burrito and deep-fried. It has all the sweeping scope of Haken’s epics without the runtime. All the vocal theatricality one could ask for without verging on cheesy. But most importantly, Charlie Griffiths developed his own sense of songwriting identity with this. 

This isn’t gimmicky dinosaur-themed metal for the humor aspect. This is clearly a work of passion, and it shows. When you make a song set from the point of view of a fish that grew legs one of the coolest things I’ve heard all year, you’re clearly on a different level of musician. And quite frankly, this level of passion and care sets my little dinosaur-loving heart a flutter. 

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Recommended tracks: Luminous Beings, In Alluvium, Digging Deeper, Crawl Walk Run
You may also like: Novena, Lucid Awakening
Final verdict: 9/10

Sebastian:

For the listeners of a band, we cannot entirely know who contributes what to a band’s sound, composition, or aesthetics unless we directly asked them. Even then, it’s not like we can embody the walls of a band’s studio while they compose and perform their materials. So, the only thing that fans of rock and metal bands can infer is that each member generally guides the direction of their particular instrument, leaving the rest of the details a mystery.

It wasn’t until the release of Charlie Griffiths‘ debut solo album Tiktaalika, that I had gotten into thinking more about this topic. When listening to this album, one can easily hear elements shared with Haken; the band that has become a prog metal cornerstone, in part thanks to Griffiths’ longtime contribution as a riff-aficionado. However, the musical style that Charlie Griffiths has adjacent to Haken is not the same as the musical style that Richard Henshall‘s solo album has adjacent to Haken. Now, this observation leads to novel conclusions. We can infer that the artist’s identifying fingerprint they leave in their solo albums has implications for what contributions they make to their main band, and perhaps by extrapolation, we can try to imagine what the other members add to the band by thinking about what their sound would be like without the fingerprints of their members with solo albums.

Now that being said, we can use this principle when listening to the music in Tiktaalika to make comparisons between the styles of Charlie Griffiths and Richard Henshall. Generally, Griffiths’ fingerprint as a musician is much more centered around metal riffs which are influenced by the scenes of progressive metal, djent, thrash, and a little bit from avant-garde and heavy metal. In contrast, Henshall’s fingerprint displays a greater variety of styles focused on progressive music in general; say in prog metal, prog rock, symphonic prog, a lot of jazz-fusion, and smaller hints of acoustic and ambient music. Stylistically, Griffiths writes his songs around building straightforward grooves which serve as highly effective hooks, while Henshall slowly builds his songs with subtle atmospheres and unexpected transitions. Henshall goes for epic, slow-burning songwriting techniques while Griffiths’ songs live strictly in the moment. Henshall excels in the bigger picture, while Griffiths excels in the details. Consequently, the two work quite well together.

As you might already know, Charlie Griffiths features a boatload of guest musicians on Tiktaalika, especially a lot of guest vocalists who do exceptionally well in their performances. This contains members from Between the Buried and Me, Dream Theater, Textures, and Luna’s Call which color Tiktaalika with a variety of moods and emotions. When it comes to an evaluation of the guest musicians’ technical performances, they check all the boxes. Their success is aided, no doubt, by Griffiths’ melodic, layered, Haken-esque vocal writing. However, most of the time the creative aspect of the vocal writing does sound noticeably derivative of Devin Townsend, Haken (which should come as no surprise), and on tracks two and nine, Between the Buried and Me. In tracks like “In Alluvium” and “Dead in the Water” the Devin Townsend impression by guest vocalist Vladimir Lalic becomes too obvious. Even though these are some of my favorite tracks on the album, they still lie in the shadow of greater projects. However, some folks have said that because these are some of the album’s best tracks, Tiktaalika would have been more unified as a whole if Lalic was the album’s sole vocalist.

Tiktaalika shines the brightest when it gets down into the nitty-gritty of grooves and allows Charlie Griffiths‘ top-tier melodic writing to prevail. These are tracks like the aforementioned “Dead in the Water” where the main, nearly avant-garde riff, supplemented by the saxophone, builds up with different varieties of the main groove and alternates into its climax where its detailed crescendo of harmonious elements consumes you. The writing reminds me of the “I bet you don’t remember me” part from Haken‘s “Visions” where the instrumentalists break into an aggressive musical interlude which also builds with the various conceptual interpretations of a core melody.

Other songs in this album prevail because of their strong vocals choruses, like “In Alluvium”, “Luminous Beings”, “Digging Deeper”, and “Crawl Walk Run”. This album generally succeeds because of its strong melodies, and Griffiths knows how long to ride them out to our satisfaction.

Ultimately, this album falls a bit short when it comes to judging its innovation and freshness in the scene. As others have pointed out before, Griffiths synthesizes elements from different bands that are currently trendy and successful in the scene without sounding all that unique himself. How can an artist not sound like a product of its time in the prog metal scene when they wear their Devin Townsend, BTBAM, and Haken colors on their sleeves? This potential criticism that Tiktaalika sounds like a generic modern prog metal amalgam could have been worse; any strong Opeth, Leprous, or Periphery influences in this would have pushed this point over the edge.

Despite this minor downfall, this album is a songwriting colossus; surely, one of my favorites of the year so far. I am pleasantly surprised to see the kind of skills Charlie Griffiths has both as a melodic songwriter and as a guitar virtuoso. Because of this, I’m going to look out for the clever tendencies that I appreciated from this album in the upcoming Haken album. For the time being, this album is a monstrous predator amongst its competitors, however, I’m not sure how well the fossils of this album will stand against the passing of time. Though, from what I’ve heard in this album, I can say that Charlie Griffiths is my favorite Haken member.

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Recommended tracks: Dead in the Water, In Alluvium, Luminous Beings, Digging Deeper
You may also like: Richard Henshall, Novena, Others by No One, Luna’s Call
Final verdict: 9/10

Related links: Spotify | Official Website | Facebook | Instagram | Metal-Archives page

Label: Inside Out Music – Facebook

Charlie Griffiths is:
– Charlie Griffiths (guitars, bass, keyboards, vocals)
– Darby Todd (drums)
– Rob Townsend (saxophone)
– Jordan Rudess (keyboards)
– Tommy Giles Rogers, Daniel De Lorgh, Vladimir Lalic, Neil Purdy (guest vocals)