A Skylit Drive - Adelphia


Hassle Records are a label that I have always appreciated to a large extent, afterall they brought me one of my more liked bands of my teenage years, Alexisonfire, who I adored until I matured or until they steadily got terrible, whichever you prefer.

A Skylit Drive sound like they fit perfectly on Hassle Records. It isn't that they sound like Alexisonfire, they don't at all but they do flit in the same genre. Looking at the bands that they have toured with, bands that include the likes of Scary Kids Scaring Kids, The Blackout and From First To Last, you can see where A Skylit Drive are heading aesthetically.

Their second album "Adelphia" sees A Skylit Drive in a place where they probably want to be but a place that doesn't sit well with myself. Vocally, Michael Jagmin sounds very much like old Saosin mixed with Coheed And Cambria and while it worked for those bands, it sounds whiney and annoying here especially when backed up by the screams of Brian White who sounds very akin to the old vocalist from From Autumn To Ashes. Guitar wise, A Skylit Drive also sound very much like From Autumn To Ashes in their "The Fiction We Live" era and I often find myself hearing guitar pinches and thinking that they've been ripped distinctly from the From Autumn To Ashes back catalogue and while I can appreciate that From Autumn To Ashes were a great band when I was sixteen, they aren't a band that I want to hear rehashed and represented to me when I am nearly twenty four years of age.

Despite the brilliant but way too short instrumental "Worlds End In Whispers Not Bangs" which has so much unfufilled potential, I can't find anything memorable here because I feel like I have heard it all before and while it is done to the best of their abilities, i'd much rather go back into my old CD collection and dig out a golden oldie than to go out to a store and set aside hard cash for this release.

2 / 5