If you like your music with a lot of melody, big choruses and plenty of sing-along lines, then Alaya is a band for you because that is exactly what their debut album Thrones is all about.
The album gets off to a somewhat slow start with Inside, which is quite a difficult listen because it doesn’t quite feel like there’s anything in the song to properly grab your interest. It’s a technically good song, but doesn’t quite have that spark. However, by the third track Sleep, which is also the lead single taken from the album, things progress a lot better and it’s clear why they chose this as a ‘teaser’ for the album because it’s got this great memorable chorus that worms its way into your head after your first listen and keeps playing on your mind because of how catchy it is.
The album pretty much carries on in the same vein from there, which is both Alaya’s strength and their downfall. The songs are good and they’ve clearly mastered the art of writing songs in this style, but it feels like there’s not a massive amount of variety between the tracks, like they’ve perfected one very specific format and have decided to run with it, rather than experimenting a little more.
Thrones is a decent enough album, don’t get me wrong, but it does feel like there’s room for improvement and a little more variety.
6/10
