Skyward - Skyward

*=Staff's pick	Opening* Guardian Die Happy* Burn It Down Come December Yesternight Travel In Time Crossroads Vaya Con Diablo

Genre	Power Metal	Sanna Åström	Vocals
Tracks	9	Ville Nummenpää	Guitar
Runningtime	42 Min.	Antti Röksää	Guitar
Label	Thundering Records	-	Bass
Release	14 Dec. 2005	Sakke Vaittinen	Drums
Country	Finland	-	Keyboards
Similar artists	Nightwish

For some bands the music is a simple thing in life, everything goes smooth and easy. You rehearse, do some live gigs and then record an album. It's simple...Well. I don't think that the members of Finnish Skyward agree on this one. The band is quite fresh but they seem to already have their shared part of struggles and miscalculations in this life. Or what can else be said of the following: a guitarist that disappears(!), a singer and yet another guitarist that quit at the doorstep to the studio. Who said that life shall be easy? Salvation was found at the local hair-dresser(!) were the band found its voice in Sanna Åström. I wouldn't blame them if they had given it all up but after many failures the recordings of their debut, Skyward was made.

Skyward perform quite classic power metal, very melodic and perhaps with a bit slower tempo than average in this genre. The focus lays on melodies often very sweet ones, way to sweet for my taste. The ace that Skyward have hidden in the murdering competitive strength that is needed to succeed in this genre is perhaps the voice they found in Sanna Åström. She has a very clear and light but still strong voice and she knows how to use it. Actually I think that her vocals save the music in a way since Skywards music isn't anything new or impressive. The individual skills are high but there is a lack of a real portion of soul and action. Very toothless. It goes on and on without any progress or even intentions to keep our interest up. Nice technical guitar solos here and there but as I said, the music has none or very little soul. The best I can think of and what I actually will remember from this album is the first song Opening with its quite cool Running Wild influenced melody line and solo in the beginning. Another thing, a quite weird one is the introducing riff in Die Happy. It's similar or I would say a copy of the leading melody in the classical song Elisabeth Bathory from legendary Tormentor...

The production holds high class, but without music on the same level it's only lame. Too bad as the band struggled so much in order to do this album. More intensity and at least some aggression in the composing the next time please! No offence but I won't die happy listening to Skyward.

Production	Vocals	Compositions
8	6	4

Summary
4 chalices of 10 - Tim