Sky Harbor has proved that a one-man ‘bedroom project’ can become a phenomenon just by the sheer strength of its music. Considered by many as the next big Metal band from India, it has gained international recognition by playing with bands such as Lamb of God, Veil of Maya, Tessaract and After the Burial.
“The name Sky Harbor was originally my tribute to two bands known as Oceansize and Cloudkicker. These two bands influenced my music more than I can think of. To me, Cloudkicker was sky and Oceansize was harbor. So, I named the band Sky Harbor,” says Keshav Dhar, guitarist of Sky Harbor.
Daniel Tompkins (ex-Tessaract) on vocals, Keshav Dhar and Devesh Dayal on guitar, Anup Sastry on drums and Krishna Jhaveri on bass is the line up, which speaks by itself about the band’s music.
“While studying at Manipal University I posted my music on Soundcloud and other musicians’ forums to get it noticed and receive feedback. Eventually, one day, Daniel emailed me on my MySpace page saying that he wanted to collaborate with me. By that time, Daniel had left Tessaract and had a lot of free time. So we started to explore different styles of music together. Eventually, Anup joined in followed by Devesh, and Krishna was the latest addition to our line up in 2013 after Nikhil Raj left. That is how we consolidated our band,” says the New Delhi-based Keshav.
Also, distance doesn’t seem to matter for the band whose members stay in India, the UK and the USA. They continue to create music and enchant their audience through the Web. “We only meet up when we perform live. As for creating music, one of us writes a song and sends it to the other members online and?the rest of the members give their inputs on the song and send it back. This way of creating music is convenient because we don’t end up taking each other for granted,” says Devesh.
Their debut album, Blinding White Noise: Illusion and Chaos, won them international acclaim and saw them collaborate with the legendary Marty Friedman of Megadeth. The album saw the band step out of progressive metal and experiment with subtle touches of melody while still maintaining a sound technicality.
“Incidentally, in our next album, we have produced music which goes beyond the anger of progressive Metal and Djent and reaches a place where there are positive soundscapes with intricate melodies. The album will also speak about how we arrived at the place we are now with a lot of positive vibes. We plan to play a few songs from the album at the Graspop Metal Meeting in 2014, which will feature us alongside Black Sabbath, Soundgar-den and Avenged Sevenfold and will be our biggest show,” says Keshav.
