Skyfire - Esoteric 5/5

01. Deathlike Overture (intro) 01:26 02. Esoteric 04:44 03. Rise and Decay 06:10 04. Let the Old World Burn 04:10 05. Darkness Descending 07:09 06. Seclusion 03:46 07. Misery’s Supremacy 07:10 08. Under a Pitch Black Sky 04:52 09. Linger in Doubt 05:18 10. The Legacy of the Defeated 07:21 11. Within Reach (bonus) 03:36

Melodic death metal; Sweden’s gift to world of music. No, ABBA don’t count. So entwined in the gestation and evolution of said genre is the Scandinavian country that some call it the “Gothenburg style”. In Flames, Dark Tranquillity, At the Gates, Carcass, Arch Enemy; all have marched under the banner of melodic death metal, and it is with this plentiful heritage in mind that I approach ’Esoteric’, the fourth album by Skyfire. They hail from a sparsely-populated municipality right at Sweden‘s southernmost tip called Höör, which I hope to never have to attempt to pronounce aloud. Although ‘Esoteric’ is their fourth album, the band’s approach has changed somewhat after a short hiatus, a five-year break between albums, and several lineup changes.

Despite the fact that they are generally pigeonholed as “melodic death metal”, and also that I have just spent a paragraph talking about just that, I feel the tag fails to credit the plethora of other influences present in Skyfire’s music. It’s immediately apparent that there are strong progressive and symphonic shades to this album; it features both an orchestra and a choir, which make everything seem very epic, and there is heavy use of acoustic piano. This makes a refreshing change from the majority of metal bands’ approach to keyboards, which is centred almost entirely around synth strings, the “orchestral-hit” setting, and the occasional wanky pitch-bend laden solo. Those staples are still in evidence on ‘Esoteric’, but the use of the piano really strengthens the melody, and allows it to go to places which might otherwise have been inaccessible.

Listening through the album, Skyfire’s style is actually reasonably hard to pin down; as soon as you think you’ve got a handle on it, something happens or changes to change your mind. At times, you listen to the guitars and drums and think that they’re basically just Soilwork or In Flames without the clean vocals (standout examples of this being “Rise and Decay” and “Let the Old World Burn” - the riff in the latter in particular is pure Soilwork) - but then a track like “Darkness Descends” comes along and flips the script utterly. “Darkness Descends” is probably the highlight of the album for me, and it showcases the things that Skyfire can do really well; it opens with a surprisingly beautiful, fragile piano/choir melody, before descending into a furious guitar and drum shred, complete with guttural roaring from new vocalist Joakim Karlsson. And then you notice that wee piano line is still carrying on over the top of the chaos the rest of the band are wreaking, and you realise you’re dealing with something just a bit special here. The song lurches from one extreme to another, but not once in its seven minutes does it feel anything less than tight, deliberate, and as well executed as it is thought out.

Guitarists Johan Reinholdz and Andreas Edlund are given plenty of time to show off their mastery of their craft, and when they are operating at maximum shred you would be forgiven for thinking you were listening to Dragonforce. It’s an impressive weapon in Skyfire’s musical arsenal, as is the fact that drummer Joakim Jonsson not only manages to keep up with them but in some style. Songs like “Seclusion” excellently showcase Skyfire putting the pedal to the metal, while “Under a Pitch Black Sky” reminds us that they are still capable of being a more ‘traditional’ melodic death metal band, with its wailing guitar harmonies, anthemic choruses and near-constant double-bass drumming. The band manage to go to so many different places and do so many different and interesting things without radically changing or over-complicating matters; it’s as if they’re thumbing their nose at the very idea of the restrictions of genre.

Vocalist Joakim Karlsson has only been in Skyfire since 2007, and yet even on this, his first record with the band, he sounds so comfortable in his musical surroundings that you’d think he’d been there all his life. One could complain that his growling style lacks variation across the full 52 minutes of the album, but I feel he acts as a kind of lynchpin, a grounding point around which the rest of the band can experiment. As musically wild as they can go at times, you’ll never be in doubt that you’re listening to Skyfire when Karlsson weighs in with his contribution.

Unlike many other bands which embrace a progressive dimension in their music, Skyfire have managed not to be consumed by it. “Misery’s Supremacy”, another heavyweight of a track which spans over seven minutes, at times has shades of Dream Theatre and Symphony X about it, especially in the piano-and-bass breakdown at its heart, while earlier featuring a ferocious riff and drum combination which wouldn’t seem out of place on a Vader album. In this way, “Misery’s Supremacy” can be viewed as a microcosm of the album as whole, as Skyfire morph seamlessly from progressive, melodic segments to straight-up brutality, and back again several times. It’s a fascinating and frankly quite exciting blend to listen to. Closing track “The Legacy of the Defeated” (which is, incidentally, also over seven minutes long) repeats the trick quite effectively, and provides a legacy for the album not of defeat, but most certainly of victory.

The copy of the album I got included the bonus track “Within Reach”, which on closer inspection is taken from their late 90s demo of the same name. Presumably it’s included entirely to show how far Skyfire have come, because it’s not very good, and frankly sounds like an entirely different band. Clean vocals, that hammy “orchestral-hit” keyboard style I was complaining about earlier, and generally just nothing like the kind of standard displayed on the album proper. That’s my one and only gripe; a pointless bonus track, which gives the album a bit of a down-ending. And that’s a pretty minor complaint. Other than that, ‘Esoteric’ is a bloody excellent album; it displays equal depths of both beauty and brutality, and manages to be surprisingly diverse while maintaining a singular, unified style. Showing this kind of form, Skyfire should easily be able to compete with their more noted countrymen on the melodic death metal scene. Highly recommended.

Genre : Melodic Death Metal

Article by Phil Sim