Atoma Released its debut back in 2012 and immediately piqued the interest of the metal community worldwide. Skylight was a slap in the face to everyone sticking to genre divisions, showing how the music, even if being placed in one core genre, can be ethereal, comprised out of so many building blocks that, in the end, the final construction has many known elements but in its entirety it is a whole new form, an entirely new way of expression.
Three guys had a vision, had a plan, and made the best post-rock/metal album of 2012. Skylight is massive, epic, emotional, dreamy, crushing, soothing, melancholic, hopeful, almost everything you want from an album, and then some. Melodies are incredible, song structures are magnificent, keyboards provide a space-like atmosphere; guitars complete the circle with mesmerizing solos, levitating riffs, and superb overall performance.
Although there aren’t songs taking the flag and proudly waving it in a victorious manner, the title song, Skylight can be characterized as being the album’s pearl. It is a massive composition showing how the end might come. With explosions, chaos, destruction incorporated in Christian Älvestam’s hellish vocals (Skylight was the last masterpiece he worked on) combined with clean chants done in Arabic. The song is a perfect example of how music should be made; no hooks, no catchy choruses, just brilliant melodies paving the way for an absolute listening bliss.
The second part of the album pushes the brakes, leading Skylight in soundtrack territory, where atmosphere is all and where every song can be considered as being the perfect companion to films such as Interstellar, 2001: A Space Odyssey (Just listen to Rainmen, Solaris or Saturn & I and you’ll feel sad because Atoma wasn't active during the filming of this masterpiece, but you can still listen to the album while reading Clark’s surreal book), or for the last scenes of Sunshine (Cloud Nine being the first choice).
And this is the only problem with the album. It wanders onto soundtrack territory a bit too often, leading the listener to think that there will be another Skylight-like explosion before the album closes; instead, you’ll get “just” massive instrumental compositions playing until the end. And that's a shame. If Skylight had just one more marvelously composed mammoth of a song, it would be considered as brilliant. This way, it’s only be remembered as one extremely pleasant surprise that came from nowhere and left a deep (but not deep enough) mark on the post-metal genre.
