Sky Eats Airplane

Sky Eats Airplane

[4.5/5]

Plenty of bands exploit the ironic potential within MySpace’s tagging system, but if you’re truly desperate to classify the racket made by Fort Worth, Texas’ Sky Eats Airplane, well, there it is atop the quintet’s homepage: “HARDCORE / ELECTRONICA / METAL.” Careful though, because it’s the slashes between those genres-the gray areas where the blending of heavy and light, crushing and dance-friendly takes place-that form the best parts of Sky Eats Airplane’s sound. On their properly eponymous second album, Sky Eats Airplane turn those gray areas into pure gold.

After a short industrial intro that’ll leave older AP readers thinking they stumbled into a Wax Trax! 12-inch circa 1989, Sky Eats Airplane promptly gets down to business. Rhythms stutter and misfire (“Disconnected”), leaving us unsure whether that’s a wild stretch of programming or a particularly nimble kick-foot we’re hearing. Dizzying math-metal licks (“Machine”) and brawny, Every Time I Die-style chugs (“Long Walks On Short Bridges”) explode into stratospheric synth-scapes, culminating in some of the saddest, prettiest, weirdest atmospheres this side of Deftones and Muse. Frontman Jerry Roush attacks the mic like a man at war with himself. He leaps from guttural screams to warm, minor-key melodies, and at times even turns his own vocals over to the machine for processing. The cynics among us may say they’ve heard it all before-and technically, that’s true-but don’t give in to that thinking. They’ve never heard it done like this. (EQUAL VISION) Aaron Burgess

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