Haken – Aquarius

I’d recommend reading this along with listening to the album, following it song by song. Bear in mind this is simply my interpretation.

Haken’s first two albums are, in my opinion, very cheesy. That doesn’t mean, however, that I don’t love them, and that’s why I’ve chosen to write about them over the next four weeks. We’re kicking off the Haken Month with their first album, Aquarius. Let’s get started!

The Point of No Return

The world has been covered by oceans, and humanity is on the brink of destruction. A married couple have been waiting patiently for their child to be born, and tonight is finally the night. The baby is born, and the sound of her life brings joy to the new parents.

However, once the father takes his first look at the child, pure disappointment rises in him, and he falls to his knees. The child has been born a freak – fins for arms and a tail where legs should be. This child is essentially a mermaid.

The parents decide they can’t raise this child because they’d never be able to love her as their own. The parents take her to the water, and although they can’t look her in the eyes as they do it, they release her. She doesn’t belong in the world of humans. She belongs in the world of water.

At this point the parents begin to think about whether they will be punished for this act. The world around them seems angrier and darker day by day…

Streams

The mermaid is now free, and loves the feeling. She feels welcome in the water, surrounded by fish. This is her true home, and the beginning of her new life.

Through this new feeling of joy, it hits the mermaid that she isn’t like the rest of the creatures that surround her – she’s one-of-a-kind. What does this mean for her life? Although she feels like she’s found her home, she also feels lost.

She feels as though she has a higher purpose. She sees the destruction of the human world around her, and has the feeling in her heart that she must do something about it.

Aquarium

We switch to the perspective of a fisherman. He owns an aquarium, and is telling his customers a story. One day he was sat fishing, when all of a sudden, something catches his eye in his peripheral vision. He looked over and saw, clear as day, a mermaid. So, he caught the creature and took her back to his aquarium, where he now keeps her as a freak show attraction.

The mermaid begs her new master to be freed from her prison. She’s becoming weak, and needs to be put back into the river. The fisherman sees how weak the mermaid is becoming, but knows that he could make a fortune from keeping her. However, the man starts to feel for the mermaid. Over months of keeping her in captivity, he falls in love.

Eternal Rain

The guilt the fisherman experiences is too much to handle. He wants to save the mermaid. She looks frail and close to death. He kisses her, and with this life starts to enter her body once more. Rain begins to fall around them, and the skies outside become dark and angry. The mermaid has been revived, but the storm has begun.

Drowning in the Flood

The fisherman and the mermaid end up back in the water, as the storm has flooded everything. Of course the mermaid is fine with this, but the fisherman begins drowning. He knows he did the right thing in sacrificing himself. There are human corpses floating everywhere in the water.

The mermaid is now aware that this is the day she saw coming, and that she must do something about it. She sees the fisherman floating down below her, dying, and swims towards him. She knows what she must do to save the man, and humanity as a whole.

She cuts open her arm and offers some of her blood to the fisherman. He drinks, and suddenly he grows gills. The mermaid saved the man that held her captive for so long.

Sun

The fisherman is left in shock. He hold his love in his arms, and knows she’s dying. She cries with word “goodbye” and slowly disappears into light, peacefully. The fisherman is left in silence. He knows that her sacrifice will save all of humanity, her blood used to allow the race to live underwater, but this doesn’t slow his pain. He would wait an eternity for her to return. He feels as though he killed her himself because it’s his life she sacrificed herself for.

Celestial Elixir

It hurts the fisherman that the mermaid will never return. He mourns his love. He now knows he must spread her cure to the rest of humanity. People begin to drink the blood of the mermaid, and grow gills of their own. The storm has stopped, and humanity will live on underwater. The mermaid sacrificed herself for a race that abused and abandoned her, and for this she is seen as a God-like saviour to men. The fisherman will never forget their love, and what it did for life.

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Can’t get proggier than that. That’s Haken’s debut album covered, and next week will be their follow-up Visions – a mind-bending sci-fi story. See you then!

– Kane