Djent burned out fast for a style that was supposed to be the Next Big Thing. It wasn't too long ago that every guitarist and their mom were trimming their bowl cuts and downtuning eight-string guitars in the hope of catching the ever-elusive djent sound. Most bands have retreated into the SoundCloud they emerged from, while the big names and diehards are carrying the genre to new heights.
Skyharbor are definitely in the latter category. They're remarkably tight for a band whose members collaborate from opposite ends of the planet, from New Delhi and Cleveland respectively. New vocalist Eric Emery has an uncanny knack for imitating his predecessor, Tesseract's Daniel Tompkins. But what drives Sunshine Dust are the guitars of Keshav Dhar and Devesh Dayal. Listen to their fretwork on "Synthetic Hands" and you'll feel like gazing into the future.
Or rather, you would, if everything didn't feel so derivative. Had a song like "Disengage/Evacuate" dropped in 2010 or 2011, it would have been nothing short of revolutionary. Now, it can't help feeling played out, after so much similar material from the Contortionist, Periphery, Monuments and the aforementioned Tesseract. There's fun to be had (the opening to "Ethos" hits like Linkin Park's early work) but it's for hardcore fans only. Casual listeners won't find anything that hasn't been done before, multiple times, in a dozen other places.
(eOne)Skyharbor are definitely in the latter category. They're remarkably tight for a band whose members collaborate from opposite ends of the planet, from New Delhi and Cleveland respectively. New vocalist Eric Emery has an uncanny knack for imitating his predecessor, Tesseract's Daniel Tompkins. But what drives Sunshine Dust are the guitars of Keshav Dhar and Devesh Dayal. Listen to their fretwork on "Synthetic Hands" and you'll feel like gazing into the future.
Or rather, you would, if everything didn't feel so derivative. Had a song like "Disengage/Evacuate" dropped in 2010 or 2011, it would have been nothing short of revolutionary. Now, it can't help feeling played out, after so much similar material from the Contortionist, Periphery, Monuments and the aforementioned Tesseract. There's fun to be had (the opening to "Ethos" hits like Linkin Park's early work) but it's for hardcore fans only. Casual listeners won't find anything that hasn't been done before, multiple times, in a dozen other places.
