Album Review
Midgar - Lead Your Children To The SkyMidgar - Lead Your Children To The Sky

As soon as I put in the new, and first, Midgar album ‘Lead Your Children to the Sky’ I am instantly hit by the uncanny resemblance the lead singer Andy Wilson-Taylor has with Charlie from Fightstar and also how they sound quite similar. Despite this, I can’t help but prefer an original sounding singer; I am impressed by the hard hitting opening track ‘Colour Us’. This sets the tone for the majority of the rest of the album. Following this rock opening number a beautiful classical piano instrumental intrudes. These are scattered throughout the album. This makes ‘Lead your children to the sky’ unique and unlike a lot of other bands around at the moment. It is a clear nod to their classical influence. Sometimes when a band does this it feels as though they are trying too hard to look musically knowledgeable and can come across as a bit pretentious but this is not the case with Midgar.

A lot of the songs on this album are quite dark. The music has a weird mix between dark and light. A song like ‘Karmic Retribution’ opens with ominous atmospheric piano and leads into similar guitar but as the vocals start the piano changes to something more light sounding to accompany the vocals that are cut up with bursts of menacing guitar. Then it switches back to the darker sound. I’m not complaining, I like it. ‘Karmic Retribution’ is one of my favourite songs on the album.

The title track ‘Lead Your Children to the Sky’ makes a departure from their rock sound and flirts with harder, rougher vocals courtesy of Steve Sitkowski. Although I do enjoy this track when I first heard it in context of the album it confused me and seemed quite out of place. Ranging from rock to classical piano instrumentals and then to a screamo-esque guest singer you cannot fault Midgar on being experimental. A band that dabbles in different sounds and techniques is good thing but the appearance of this mid album just threw me a little bit. Despite my initial confusion the teaming of Steve Sitkowski’s harsh vocals with hard guitar riffs and heavy drums makes this a track worth listening to.

Although I did enjoy this album from start to finish and admire them for showing their classical influence and experimenting with different vocals I feel that they could be too easily compared to Fightstar. Although they rupture originality on places in others, like the vocals, they just don’t. Regardless of this I would recommend Midgarr a listen, especially if you are a Fightstar fan.

3/5

Review by Nicci Peet
 Band Members

Andy
Mike
Matt
Oli
 Track Listing

Coming Soon

 Band Related Links
Midgar Myspace
 Review Score Code
- Top Cheese
- Brilliant
- Pretty damn good
- Ok I guess
- What Was That?