Skyview Drive - What If They Knew
Rock and roll with a dash of indie rock and hardcore influence came together to form Skyview Drive, a self-driven experimental rock band from Massachusetts. The two-song EP What If They Knew gives a taste of what the band has to offer with a plethora of diverse influences from Saves The Day and The Get Up Kids to the RX Bandits and GunsLikeGirls while giving plenty of room for the band to grow. The collective ages of the band average out to just sixteen years yet the sound doesn’t lead on to that fact.
Opening track Trapped, In The Citadel shows a rock element right from the start with vocals reminiscent of Three Doors Down and The Receiving End Of Sirens. Lyrically, the material of Trapped, In The Citadel has a metaphorical sense that doesn’t rate up there with bands like American Nightmare but certainly has more substance than the average rock band. “Burning embers in the air; we are the smell of fear. Prisoners of our own ways, of the words that we can’t say.” Influences of hardcore and post-hardcore come out with a more breakdown-friendly sound towards the end that fades out into some catchy guitar riffs.
The second track Deception has a darker feel to it, with vocals grasping lines like “She’s a heartbreaker, and she will not let me go (killing me, killing me).” and “Red skies are taking over fear.” The song starts off with a synthesizer rhythm that is really catchy and leads into vocals that sound a lot more like The Receiving End Of Sirens than the previous track. Towards the end of the track, a heavily-hardcore influenced breakdown comes on with the only screaming in the album, which caught me off-guard but added a lot more emotional depth to it as it progressed. The higher screams work well, but the lower screams at the very beginning don’t seem to fit as well to the tuning of the guitars. The build-up throughout the track really works well and delivers a powerful ending to the album.
For a debut EP, What If They Knew has some great things going for it. The guitar riffs, drums, bass lines, and lyrics seem to all work well together, although various tweaks here and there with pitch of voice or placing of “breakdowns” could add more depth and solidify the sound Skyview Drive is going towards. A very rock-oriented sound with elements of hardcore and indie has a promising future for Skyview Drive, and with the advent of more material, I think a more cohesive sound will develop that mixes all the influences into a sound that is carried through all the tracks. Until then, this two-song EP, available on Myspace, is a healthy introduction to the Massachusetts-based band.
TRACK LIST:
01. Trapped, In The Citadel
02. Deception