Manchester Hard Rock group SKIES TURN BLACK just released their debut a few weeks ago, a pretty ambitious project by the title of "No Place Like Home". At 1 hour 1 minutes, that length isn't necessarily rare or anything like that, but I know for sure it's damn hard to make a record that long without getting stale and boring with your songwriting and you definitely need some new ideas on basically every song to prevent that.

Did the British quartet succeed? Hardly. My best guess for the vision they had for this record is building the songs on a foundation of a catchy riff and a catchy chorus. this are definitely well executed, but to be frank, it's not too hard to write a catchy chorus. Of course I'm not saying the hooks on this LP are all weak, I actually like quite a few of them (prime example being "Fairy Tale" and "A World About To Flood"). The issue is that Hard Rock and Power Metal (which this record is not heavily, but reasonably influenced by) are already focused on being anthemic and catchy, so it's already not a very unorthodox approach.

Definitely not like if they tried this on a Deathcore or Black Metal album, and this should be obvious, but being catchy doesn't equal being good, for the reasons I mentioned above. The album has great vocals by Jamie Jordan, some good lyrics, solid production (The vocals and guitar riffs blend together very well, so their nearly equal volume isn't a problem), and I personally really enjoy the "softer" side of Metal and Rock just as much as the heavier stuff, which I've been listening to more recently. So overall, it's a nice attempt for sure, I just think the band should have come up with better and more, "grandiose" ideas and refine their sound to make it more unique before making a 1 hour long record.