SKY ARCHITECTS (The Promise Of Tomorrow) CD
SKY ARCHITECTS come from Denmark and along they bring their 2012 debut album 'The Promise Of Tomorrow', labeled by themselves as Doom-Pop. A label like that is interesting enough, so let’s see what we got here. Both the short 'The Promise' and the following 'Fade Out' begin with layered guitars, effect-laden melodies over a heavily distorted bass guitar and pounding drumming. A nice build-up and dynamic shifts create a nice Post-Rock atmosphere, before a calm melodious outro ends the song (hence the title!). This seems to be the blue-print for most of the songs, with some variety thrown in, like in 'We Will Never Forget This' with soothing violin melodies before the calmly haunting 'All Free Must Fly' comes on with some eerily beautiful female vocals and again nice strings arrangements over gently picked guitar chords.
Vocals in general are used sparsely on the album, which is okay, as they are of the introvert, über-emotional kind which is just not very much my cup of tea. Therefore the instrumental 'The Dark Wave' is one of the best songs in my opinion, as it has a more up-front attitude and some tasty bass riffs. 'Breach These Walls' is another instrumental, driven by programmed drum-beats, while the mellow 'Ignite' features a piano throughout. Here the calm vocals fit very well, greatly adding to the introvert atmosphere of the song. To pick-up the label Doom-Pop again, I have my problems to find the Doom in here, I would replace it with the Post-Rock sticker.
Mentioning this, I have to say I have a little problem with most Post-Rock bands. They surely supply nice melodies and dynamic depths to create very atmospheric and pleasing ambiences, but the songs seem to be not very distinguishable from each other, because the music creates only a flow with no real instrumental stand-outs. To me, SKY ARCHITECTS have the same problem, although they do their best to offer some variety by using well-placed different styles and instruments as mentioned above. But after all it seems to be all about delayed melodies over some distorted guitar chords with outbursts of heavy drumming, but I miss some biting, memorable riffs or hook lines. A well-played and -produced album without any question, but with just not enough highlights to make it a real blast.
(Steve Albino)