The Mountain

The Mountain is the third studio album by British progressive metal band Haken. The album was released on 2 September 2013 and was the first album to be released through InsideOut Music. The album is the last release by Haken to feature bassist Thomas MacLean. The Mountain is to date the band's most popular album.

The album received no singles, but a promotional 'single-edit' music video for the song "Cockroach King" was released on 16 September 2013. The video currently sits as the most viewed video on Haken's YouTube channel.

Basis

The concept for The Mountain is based around the band's journey through their career, as well as reflecting the wider trials and tribulations of life. The album uses the concept of "the Mountain" as an allegory for the struggles that we all face in life, with many of the songs taking from allegorical fables, such as the Icarian influence on "Falling Back to Earth."

While they all follow the same abtract concepts, the songs on The Mountain are self-contained and do not form a storyline with the exception of "Because It's There" which has callbacks to every song on the album, and "Cockroach King" which forms the basis for the storyline of Vector and Virus.

Artwork

The album artwork for The Mountain depicts the peak of a mountain, with the legendary Sisyphus pushing a boulder up towards its summit, tying into the album's themes of the unavoidable struggles of life, and the many allusions to Greek fables found within the album. The Mountain is the first of many Haken albums to receive artwork created by Blacklake Design, a Netherlands-based design firm, who would be responsible for all of Haken's album art until Fauna.

The mountain seen in the artwork is an edited image of Vihren, the highest peak in Bulgaria.

Production

Production of The Mountain began in early 2013, with many members of the band taking 2012 to focus on their side projects, most notably Richard Henshall and Thomas MacLean recording To-Mera's third album, Exile, and Ross Jennings recording Redados' third album, Turbo Torture.

The album was announced on 20 June 2013 and released just over two months later.

Tracklist

Pos.	Song Title	Length
	Total Length:	69:10
1.	"The Path"	2:46
2.	"Atlas Stone"	7:33
3.	"Cockroach King"	8:14
4.	"In Memoriam"	4:17
5.	"Because It's There"	4:23
6.	"Falling Back to Earth"	11:50
7.	"As Death Embraces"	3:13
8.	"Pareidolia"	10:50
9.	"Somebody"	9:00
10.	"The Path Unbeaten" - Bonus Track	2:12
11.	"Nobody" - Bonus Track	4:53

Personnel

Haken

Ross Jennings - vocals
Richard Henshall - guitars
Charlie Griffiths - guitars
Diego Tejeida - keyboards
Thomas MacLean - bass
Raymond Hearne - drums

Additional Personnel

Joey 'Dah Lipz' Ryan - french horn
Matthew Lewis - trombone
Barry Clements - bass trombone

Production and Design

Anthony Leung - drum engineering
Jens Bogren - mixing. mastering
Diego Tejeida - mixing on "The Path Unbeaten" and "Nobody"
Blacklake - art and design
Corey Meyers - logo
Joanna Krause - photography

Quotes from the Band

"To us, 'The Mountain' is symbolic of our journey as a band, but also reflects the wider trials and tribulations of life. Lyrically, we've done a lot of soul searching which has given the album an emotional depth that we're sure listeners will really relate to, whatever personal mountain they are climbing"

-Richard Henshall

"I'm still not sure if the rest of the band fully understood what I was trying to achieve lyrically with Aquarius and Visions, which I think left them quite cold and therefore they couldn't relate to those albums so well. If you ask them today, I still don't think they could explain the stories or the themes. So when it came to writing the Mountain, everyone wanted to get involved with that part of the process [...]"

-Ross Jennings

Trivia

The Mountain is the most listened to Haken album, with "Cockroach King" having over 11 million listens on Spotify alone.
The album is the first of four releases to be mixed by Jens Bogren, followed by Restoration, Affinity, and Fauna.
Until 2023's Fauna, The Mountain is the only Haken studio album to not begin with the letters "V" or "A."