At Risk come soaring back with a long-awaited EP, "Skyward"
Some bands vanish with a whisper. Back in 2006, after years of sharpening their sound from scruffy punk experiments in Oxford dorm rooms to darkly shimmering pop-rock on marquee stages, At Risk stepped away with unfinished business rattling behind them. Their long awaited EP Skyward is the punctuation mark they never got to place. It’s concise, loud, tender, and undeniably euphoric. It closes the loop with four tracks and fifteen minutes that feel like a final exhale and a little victory lap.
The group’s evolution shows in their bones. They once thrashed their way through student halls, then graduated to support slots with Kasabian, King Adora, Inkubus Sukkubus and the Glitterati, winning their own crowds with their brand of music that’s still incredibly fresh today. To say the least, Skyward still carries that feel now nearly 20 years later. The guitars have attitude without dramatics. The drums stay wiry and physical. The whole thing sounds like a live set collapsing into tape like the kind of recording that’s pure personality coming through on the frontend.
Cat is the emotional accelerant and her voice doesn’t just land melodies, it inhabits them. She charms consistently and lets each lyric sit like a confession told in a kitchen at 3 a.m. These songs remember the party of youth as something ecstatic and confusing. Her performance captures that ambiguity. Though it’s only four tracks long, our personal favorites were “Sin Before Sunrise” and “My Darling Angel”. However, don’t let that stray you for even a second from enjoying this uninterrupted from start to finish!
Part of what makes Skyward feel vital is its origin story. These final recordings were tracked at Dungeon Studios with engineer Rich Haines, a local legend lost since, which gives the project a gentle sense of tribute too. Rather than retrofitting everything for modern gloss, the band pulled from monitor mixes of the era and let Lee master them without sacrificing its history. The result is a time capsule, a preserved snapshot that still completely fits the vibe of today’s sound.
For an EP this short, it still manages to pack a completely solid punch. There’s punk in the ankles, alt-rock in the spine, and a sort of goth pop shimmer in the production. It’s surely got that grittiness to it coming from the instrumentation overall, but said again, it’s the vocals that serve as the constant to the whole project.
Fifteen minutes can’t rewrite a band’s history, but it can let them sign their own ending. Skyward is scrappy, honest, and cathartic, the sort of EP that we already know we’ll be coming back to time and time again. Here’s to 2026 and hoping that even more is in the works. While we patiently wait, go ahead and click those links below to listen in, follow along, and of course to stay tuned for the latest!
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