Review: Haven of Echoes – The Indifferent Stars

Style: Progressive Rock, Art Rock (Clean vocals)
Recommended for fans of: new Leprous, Agent Fresco, Porcupine Tree
Review by: Christopher
Country: UK/Germany
Release date: 7 Oct, 2022

Making it big in the music world isn’t always a case of first time luck. Richard Henshall started out with To-Mera before shifting his focus to Haken, and Dan Tompkins’ first efforts—among them the recently resurgent First Signs of Frost—were outshone by his joining Tesseract on their breakthrough album One. None of this is to diminish those first bands; my point is that you never know which project will be the career-defining one, no matter the relative success of your others. 

Which brings us neatly to Haven of Echoes. Multi-instrumentalist Andreas Hack, formerly of German progressive rock outfit Frequency Drift has joined forces with vocalist Paul Sadler, formerly of British prog-death group Spires, to found this luxuriant, new progressive rock project replete with melody and melancholy, and The Indifferent Stars is their rousing debut, with integral contributions from former Frequency Drift alumni Nerissa Schwarz and Wolfgang Ostermann.

Whilst on the lighter side instrumentally, there is an enormous emotional heft to The Indifferent Stars, with existential lyrics meditating on love, religion, death and other topics. All this poignancy is conveyed adeptly via the agonised yearning of Sadler’s vocals whose singing style bears a striking resemblance to Einar Solberg’s, albeit softer and a little less overwrought. Indeed, many of Haven of Echoes’ tracks would sit fairly comfortably on either of Leprous’ last two albums, utilising a similar combination of mournful strings as well as gorgeous piano, keyboard and harp contributions from Schwarz. 

None of this is to say that Haven of Echoes are a mere Leprous clone; there’s far more going on here. Their style is rooted more in a more expansive progressive rock sound that simultaneously contains a sense of melody and instrumentation that recalls the art rock sensibility of Meer and Agent Fresco. Indeed, one can detect a variety of influences from across the prog spectrum: the deeply sinister section in the second half of “The Lord Giveth” and the eerie solo over dissonant piano chords on “Let Them In” are positively Opethian, the acoustic guitar running under emphatic distortion chords on the “Endtime” chorus is straight out of the Porcupine Tree playbook, and the exotic ambience and tom-tom-driven beat opening “The Orator’s Gift” have clear roots in Tool.

“Sirensong” opens The Indifferent Stars and straight away you know you’re in the safest of hands: the colossal weight of emotive writing, the sadness of the strings, the thunder of those great open chords and the roiling ambiences beneath, all of it is lovingly composed and produced. The opener is probably my favourite track, but there’s a surfeit of gorgeous composition on offer across all six tracks. Having reviewed a lot of overstuffed albums of late, it’s been refreshing to hear a band who have refined a handful of tracks to a gemstone lustre and do it all in a cool forty-five minutes. As much as I’d like a few more peaks from The Indifferent Stars, there aren’t any lows to report. 

Frequency Drift and Spires were underappreciated in their time, but Haven of Echoes have delivered one of the most exciting works of melodic progressive rock of this year, and there’s potential here for them to become one of the genre’s leading lights; certainly these guys deserve the real commercial success that previously eluded them. The Indifferent Stars is a gorgeous work, one forged in the hearts of a collective of dedicated musicians whose dedication and passion knows no bounds. Luxuriate in it, it’s a gem. 

Recommended tracks: Sirensong, Stasis, Endtime
You may also like: Meer, Frequency Drift, Playgrounded, Mother of Millions
Final verdict: 7.5/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Official Website | YouTube

Label: Independent

Haven of Echoes is:
– Paul Sadler (vocals)
– Andreas Hack (all other instruments)
– Nerissa Schwarz (electric harp, keys)
– Wolfgang Ostermann (drums)