Wite Skies
Black Tide

Black Tide is the debut album by the British melodic rock band called White Skies, a band consisting of pretty well-known musicians from the British scene. It is formed by White from Samson, Ray from Ya Ya and Dante Fox keyboardist Pete, and they were aiming to do a pure AOR album like those from Journey, Toto, Foreigner, etc. Not exactly the freshest of ideas considering that there are about thirteen of these on a dozen musicians. And White Skies don’t do much on the graphics to lure potential buyers, their logo and cover are very uninteresting; fortunately for them it is not that we are looking at here at Hallowed.

It is melodic rock/hardrock, or AOR if you like. Catchy with the typical selection of songs, from speedier to ballads and anthems, no surprises. The vocals are surprisingly weak, perhaps because the hoarse vocals of Mick White don’t really fit the melodic style of the band, he has more of a metal kind of voice. The lack of fresh ideas can also deter those looking for novelty when getting new albums or getting to know new artists. I don’t hear anything original on this album, and it is long, the twelve tracks sets you back an hour of your time, and that is to play it only once. Too much for an album of this genre, especially with a singer that is more annoying than good.

What can I say? AOR albums are usually good, but with every release being more or less the same I have long since lost interest in new AOR-bands as they all sound the same. Well, these guys do have a poorer vocalist, and that can be argued to be beneficial as it makes them different. But White is far from the only non-high-pitched voice in this genre, Paul Shortino sounds mor or less the same, and there are others, but I don’t want to write down a bunch of irrelevant names. The moral of the story is that they make decent AOR songs, that surely would have been enjoyable enough with a decent AOR singer, but in this case they are all let down by poor vocals that deprives the songs of feeling and poise.

I have a hard time seeing that anyone will find this album particularly interesting, it is rather dull being way too long and having a vocalist that fails to breathe life into the songs. Some might like it, there are always those, but it is very difficult to imagine that anyone will ever think of Black Tide as one of the best albums they have ever heard.

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