Review Summary: With Guiding Lights, Skyharbor get off the djent bandwagon, takes a dive against the current, and emerges - shattering our expectations while redefining their own brand of prog rock/metal.
The djent scene - for the lack of a better word - has exploded over the last decade with gems like
TesseracT ,
Animals As Leaders , and
Periphery among others. However, the number of bands sprouting off every corner of the metal world has pretty much crippled the ability of these bands to sound apart from each other. Hence the fear of a negative connotation for djent similar to the fate metalcore undeniably suffered was valid.
Guitarist Keshav Dhar has in the past urged that that
Skyharbor is not a djent project perhaps for this reason. However the début release, even while managing to stand-out as a fresh prog metal, essentially takes a djenty approach (which I loved). Building on the same formula would have come at the cost of being labelled. With Skyharbor's sophomore effort sidestepping from from such a label, Keshav stays true to his word! But.. was it worth the risk?
With a successful crowd-funding campaign aiding Skyharbor to rope in Forrester Savell (Animals as Leaders, Karnivool) for mixing and mastering, Guiding Lights outshines the début effort Blinding White Noise (BWN) quite evidently in quality of production. The subtle emphasis on a particular aspect of the sound at places, does not ever compromise clarity of any instruments.
Production - Excellent.
Coming to song-writing there are plenty of drastic changes from BWN , or should I call it an evolution? For starters, average song is 7 minutes over the 4 minutes in BWN. Dan's vocals takes on unusual flavours, in ways you'd never expect on a skyharbor record: from a playful George Micheal-like expressiveness to a Brandon Boyd-like funkiness along with usual elegant style (minus the screams). The instrumentation itself has shed the tasty djent rhythmic approach [reduced to one song 'Evolution' and minor phrases on two more] to focus on a
Karnivool styled proggy post rock approach, albeit more ambient, melody centric and more heavier. The mood changes are subtle, from soothing to surreal, yet almost unpredictable during the early listens. Be it the
Tool -like drum centric marathon build ups, jazzy bass-lines or a sprinkle of pop-punk vibes: The album is stacked with odd surprises, never going overboard nor sounding out of place.
Song writing - Excellent.
While there are plenty of memorable melodies and sound-scapes, some of the moments in the album come off as a drag only because the particular patterns played out were mediocre or uninteresting. But these moments are limited to a handful, particularly during the tracks Halogen and New Devil where I hate to say, even Dan's vocals sound like a drag. The guest solo's from Mark Holcomb on 'Allure' was flavourful but the one by
Plini towards the end on 'Constant' was okay, but relatively forgettable. A major downside - This album may not be fully digestible - at the first first go, unlike the shorter BWN - Illusion & Chaos dynamics. If a full stream listen does not do it, I'd recommend you to perform power-walks over individual tracks. After warming up to them, you'd be all set for an hour long eargasmic marathon!
Ease of listening - Difficult/Complicated.
Needless to say, this is hell of a euphoric ride that grows onto you with every focused listen. Certainly more intricate than the already impressive début, the 70 minutes length is justified by the rich substance. With Guiding Lights, Skyharbor get off the djent bandwagon, takes a dive against the current, and emerges - shattering our expectations while redefining their own brand of prog rock/metal.
