Skyharbor - Sunshine Dust

Multinational music group Skyharbor (who originated from India and eventually incorporated American members) released their third full length offering of melodic progressive metal: Sunshine Dust, their first with new Bennington-esque singer, Eric Emery, after Daniel Tomkins’ return to TesseracT. That tie to one of prog metal’s most prominent names in the past few years does end up haunting the album though and overshadowing the performances the band pull off here. Taking quite a similar melodic vocal approach and atmospheric prog approach, the band didn’t really make much of an effort to distance themselves from the mighty TesseracT. At the very least, the band show themselves to be able to do on paper what TesseracT do. Indeed, the band’s instrumental performances are tight and dynamic, and Emery makes a pretty strong display of his vocal ability across the album, only marred by its lack of much major character. Where the album falls short is its writing, not departing too far from the basic modern prog mold or differentiating itself stylistically from TesseracT nearly enough. The band take far too few risks for an album of this scale, and with their link to TesseracT gone, they didn’t take the necessary opportunity to establish a unique identity within their shared subgenre. Instead, what we get with Sunshine Dust, is a safe, serviceable album, which is kind of contrary to the spirit of prog.

Despite the rather boring beginning the album’s first two songs make for, the third track, “Out of Time” brings a healthy, rejuvenating dose of anthemic vocal melodies, as well as an elevating string arrangement, in a well-constructed proggy alternative metal format naturally reminiscent of Tompkins’ original band. But the two following tracks, “Synthetic Hands” and “Blind Side”, are pretty standard modern prog metal and sound like unexciting TesseracT runoff. “Disengage / Evacuate”, while still standing in the shadow of TesseracT is a little bit more interestingly written with the darker, heavier (Periphery-ish) turn the song takes near its climactic end.

The standard alternative prog metal cut “Ethos” and the semi-ballad-y “Ugly Heart” don’t really do much to spice up the track listing afterwards. The longer amd heavier instrumental cut, “The Reckoning”, though helps the band’s ambient prog and prog metal chops stand out a bit, even if the song as a whole still isn’t that enthralling. And the subsequent “Dissent” finds the band channeling Periphery (and Linkin Park big time in the vocal department) instead for a much welcome change of pace. “Menace” beings the album back down to its alternative metal-tinged prog baseline, incorporating a bit of djent and some harsh vocals but still not making much of an impact with its gaudy choral melody getting in the way.

The album ends with the two-minute djent-indulgent interlude, “Temptress”, leading into the Periphery-esque closing title track, which channels that band’s knack for melody and dynamic, but not in a way that doesn’t sound so directly lifted from their playbook. Nevertheless, it is one o of the stronger tracks on the album.

The album does end up changing things up on its latter third, but it’s kind of too little too late. The problem with Sunshine Dust is that when Skyharbor aren’t imitating TesseracT, they’re imitating someone else like Periphery or Veil of Maya, and they still haven’t really formed their own sonic identity. The performing ability is there, without a doubt, and the band have the capacity to wield the components of more uniquely constructed prog. A blend of TesseracT’s and Periphery’s best qualities could easily land them a top spot in the modern prog metal game, those qualities would just have to be arranged in a novel fashion, which should be the band’s next focus after this warm-up album with new members. Skyharbor has potential to ascend to the higher ranks of prog, but they’re only limiting themselves by continuing to ride the coattails of bigger bands in their field. Hopefully their next album finds them establishing a more concrete and unique identity.