A DYING MAN'S HYMN

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Astral melody, the return of an incredible talent

Sky Architect was easily my favorite new band of 2010, along with the British band Haken. The obscure Dutch band released their debut, Excavations of the Mind, in 2010. It was easily one of my absolute favorite albums of the year. The band had such an incredibly fresh and inviting sound, fusing so many different styles into a truly invincible chasm of beautiful music. On the outset their music seemed like a choppy, harsh blotch of heavy progressive rock. However, when delved into not even that deep, the band revealed themselves as an incredibly talented group of not only humbly proficient instrumentalists, but also supremely gifted composers, crafting some of the most inventive and inviting stuff I had ever heard. Only a year later, the band returned with another studio offering, A Dying Man's Hymn. Again a concept album, the band truly returns in full glory, with an even more mature and complete set of songs and incredibly wonderful album to be offered. The band returns with a new fervor, fleshing out their album with much more energy and an incredibly new diverse sound. This album will certainly carry out for me as one of the best albums of 2011, and is a superb effort by this wonderfully talented group of Dutchmen.

Similar to the last album, the first listen was that of peasant mediocrity. I like the music, but was at first unimpressed. Also similar to the last album, even before my first listen was complete, I began to again realize how truly genius this group of musicians are. The album isn't really a grower; I was just too cold to accept the simple beauty of the music. The effortless harmonies, soaring melodies, and incredible rhythmic quality really give this music a superb charm. Rik Van Honk's use of numerous classic keyboard instruments gives the music wonderful color, contrasting heavier parts with soothing Mellotron or growling Hammond, and the guitar melodies harmonize the bass lines and keyboard runs with amazing grace and dexterity. The vocals have a slightly dissonant quality and really accent the superb music's atmosphere. The instrumental aspect of the music has an oddly appealingly jagged feel, as if they purposefully all play just minutely off as to make the music and interesting display of dissonant grace.

The band is able to traverse through all the feelings of the sonic spectrum, transporting the listener through heavy sections and effortlessly transitioning to light melodic sections, upbeat pieces, and so much more. This album is truly redolent of everything that is good about progressive rock, progressive composition, and music in general. It is full of every wonderful musical quality taught in a classroom, as well as full of tasteful experimentation, with the band, while staying in the bounds of music theory, advancing what a band can really do in a musical situation, utilizing various tones, keyboards, harmonies, and rhythms to make a wonderfully unique musical experience.

Overall, I can't really express how much I adore this band and this music. Throughout their two albums of material, they have shown me in plenty of detail how wonderfully amazing they really are. This album, in my opinion, is even better than their debut, which I think is a marvelous masterpiece. The band has matured in every way; the production, composition, lyrics, and so much more just seem so much more professional and unique to me, showing this album to be a truly spectacular display of progressive music. I think will easily top the charts of best albums of 2011, and is truly a masterpiece. 5 stars.

Hailing from the Netherlands, Sky Architect have literally burst onto the prog music scene and grabbed quite a lot of attention with their debut release Excavations Of The Mind. This was quite an achievement considering the numbers upon numbers of great prog band's that don't get any love from the audiences!

One of the most important reasons of why that particular album became a hit was the vast amounts of different sounds and styles that Sky Architect experimented with at the time. Fusing classic Yes/Genesis sound with modern metal bands like Dream Theater and Pain Of Salvation, plus let's not forget the jazz rock/fusion references on The Deep Chasm multi-part suite. The reason why I mention the debut album is because A Dying Man's Hymn is not at all as impressive in comparison.

The band has polished their sound and improved their lengthy compositions by making them even more exciting for their prog audiences. But ultimately this album didn't make much of an impression upon my first few revisits. The overall sound is not that heavy, instead moving even closer to the classic prog arrangements while completely abandoning Jazz Rock fusion and especially Metal. This time you'll hear clear references to Gentle Giant and even Pink Floyd but most of these moments feel out of context with the compositions and begin to remind me more of prog-by-numbers imitators of the retro-prog scene like Phideaux and the Flower Kings than the ground breaking new band that I heard on Excavations Of The Mind. The fact that this record is almost 30 minutes longer than it's predecessor may imply to some that Sky Architect had quite a lot to say while recording it, but ultimately I would have enjoyed the material more if it wasn't expanded to epic proportions upon every arising opportunity. If you're expecting fun and short moments like Gyrocopter or Russian Wisdom then you'll probably feel a bit underwhelmed by this album since almost 90% of the material keeps itself in a slow-moving pace with only a few rare bursts into the unexpected. It's this factor of spontaneity that I feel is lacking here and ultimately drops the overall quality down a whole notch for me. Well, it's actually that and the complete lack of standout compositions. Every tune has at least one minute or two minutes of gorgeous music embedded into it but it just doesn't add up to much when I look at the big picture.

Is A Dying Man's Hymn a bad album? No, far from it! The music is great, especially if you're a fan of the retro prog music. Is it an excellent album? No, because it basically brings nothing new or interesting to the table while still managing to entertain us during it's hefty play time. The good, but non-essential rating seems pretty clear-cut to me.

**** star songs: Treebird (9:14) Melody Of The Air - Expositio (6:16) The Campfire Ghost's Song (10:00) Melody Of The Air - Explicatio (11:14) Hitodama's Return (6:37) Melody Of The Air - Recapitulatio (4:38) A Dying Man's Hymn (5:11)

*** star songs: Woodcutters Vile (12:58) The Breach (11:05)

'A Dying Man's Hymn' - Sky Architect (8/10)

As a fairly rare occurrence in today's music industry, Dutch prog rockers Sky Architect followed-up their debut with something new the very next year. 'Excavations Of The Mind' was not an album I had the pleasure of hearing when it first came out, but those who did get around to hearing it were excited and impressed by the sound that this band came onto the scene with. The band's second album 'A Dying Man's Hymn' attempts to recreate the success of the first, and the result has been another grand work for proggy hard rock.

Sky Architect's sound is much alike many bands under the 'heavy prog' label; music that maintains the complexity that one might hear from many classic prog bands, but with the grit and edge of hard rock. There is a fair dynamic and variety in sounds on this album, although despite the album's rather challenging length, the record flows well and feels cohesive. The band I would compare Sky Architect with most are Swedish rockers Beardfish, although the music of this band is considerably more sombre. As I just briefly mentioned, the album's length is mentionable on its own, resting around the seventy seven minute mark. As is the case for much progressive rock, the album takes a few listens to grow on the listener, although in this case, I went from thinking it was a fairly run-of-the-mill record to thinking it a real winner. Here is a band that marries exciting performances with dynamic compositions and everything under the sun. It is a lot to take in at first, but despite the at times by-the-numbers prog approach the band takes, I often found myself surprised by what this band can do.

One of the greatest things about this band is their tightness as a band, being able to come in and cut out in unison, and sound passionate while doing it. The opening of this album is a great example, with a sample of a screaming man and woman leading the band in to playing at a fairly unexpected moment, but despite the awkwardness of the timing, it is pulled off quite nicely. The vocals of Tom Luchies here are what I would consider to be warm, but not particularly impressive; he tends to stay within his comfort zone most of the time and rarely venture much of the mid-range. The instrumentation is rich and intelligent, with a particular note on how great some of the bass licks on the record are. Sky Architect's second album has been something of a surprise to me, really. I do not often find myself excited about bands that stick within the existing borders of progressive rock, but the excellence with which this band manages to tackle the sound makes 'A Dying Man's Hymn' a remarkable album.