SKYLIGHTING

Starting as a one-man project by Christian Ayala and evolving into a full live band in 2017, Puerto Rican quartet Avandra are back with their third album, for which they have signed with Dutch label Layered Reality Productions. They have classified themselves as prog metal with post rock intentions, and that is as good a way of describing them as any, although more of the latter and less of the former with plenty of melodic rock and atmospheric inclinations as well. They were due to play at the Progpower Europe festival in 2020, which of course was cancelled, and it would have been interesting to have heard them in that setting as this album just does not give a good example of what I think they are probably capable of. Written and recorded by Christian in his home studio, the other guys added their parts remotely, and they also utilised the talents of keyboard player Vikram Shankar. This means there was little opportunity for the songs to be developed in a more organic fashion, and possibly why this comes across as way too one- dimensional for my tastes.

That there are some great performances from all involved in never in doubt, but it takes effort to concentrate on just one line within the compressed mass, although drummer Adrián Arroyo Schuck is a revelation who is worth just that. Much is being made of geography, in that there are few bands from the Caribbean who play this style of music, but to be honest it has never meant anything to me as to where a band comes from, as it has always been about the music. Geography becomes an important facet of the sound only when local influences have made their way into the sound, but this is so sanitised that it could have come from absolutely anywhere, so much so that I could not have any sort of informed guess, as it could be America as much as it could UK or Europe, there is no defining factor or influence on which to make a call. To my ears there is nothing here which makes it stand out, it is straight down the middle of the road music, where "progressive" is seen very much as a genre as opposed to a desire to create something different and new. The production is slick, handled by Daniel Schwartz (Astronoid) while the mastering was done by Jamie King (Between The Buried And Me, Scale The Summit, The Contortionist and more), but between them they have managed to squeeze out any sense of originality and rawness: this is so sweet it makes my teeth hurt. Possibly in the live environment they will be very different, but there is little soul left in this.