Skyscraper
Elevation

”A skyscraper is a tall, continuously habitable building of many floors, usually designed for office, commercial and residential use. There is no official definition or height above which a building may be classified as a skyscraper and at which height it may not be considered a high-rise anymore. For buildings above a height of 300 m (984 ft), the term Supertall can be used, skyscrapers reaching beyond 600 m (1,969 ft) are classified as Megatall.” Definition from a free encyclopaedia, but Skyscraper can also be a British/Norwegian rock band. I don’t think it will be too difficult to judge which we are going to write about in this review. Elevation is the title of the debut, the cover looks a tad drab and ordinary to be honest and from this cover art I think the title would have been better as Skyline. But then again never judge a book by its cover they say, that can also be said to be true coming to rock music. But what about this album? is it better than it looks?

It is melodic rock music, maybe you could label it as AOR or something in that region. It is that kind of music, catchy choruses and a fairly typical vocalist of the genre, a small one at that. At least if we look at the name which happens to be small. He is a decent vocalist despite his stature, the soundscape is brilliant, impressive. One hour playing time is very ambitious and the songs show the usual variety of the genre. There is the ballad, the energetic song, the catchy hit song, the usual variety is there. You get what the genre tend to promise and offer. Nothing fancy in that regard, nothing fresh, new or exciting so to speak. They do what most bands in the genre do, with a good sound, a good production they do what they can to spice up their debut album.

In part they succeed. It is a good album, the songs in general work very well. But it is also a long album, an hour playing time is on the long side for an album of this genre. One can tire a bit from listening to the album, waiting for it to end. So as much as I like the production, I think the album does not live up to the potential the production promises. It is a solid debut that offers some good songs, a very good one but an overall quite flat performance and thanks to having a real hit song that cannot get out of your mind it floats just above your run-of-the-mill-album.

I would say not as good as it could have been, the song Skyscraper is excellent but the rest of the album is about as run-of-the-mill as they get. A decent album, great production but I miss those brilliant guitar lines of the best in the genre as well as that vocalist that magically transform the good into the great. They have a bit to go but I don’t think a fan of melodic rock will be too disappointed if they pick it up as it is still a good listen and works great as driving music, or as background in the garage or wherever you work with some discrete music in the background. They don’t quite have the upper hand on the competition which means that they are likely to disappear in the crowd.

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