RSS Feed


STONE SOUR
House Of Gold & Bones: Part 1

Roadrunner (2012)
Rating: 8/10

With Slipknot slowly on the road to a full return, it’s not particularly surprising to see a new Stone Sour record.

House Of Gold & Bones is a two-part journey that follows the story of someone at the “crossroads of his life” as questions of mortality begin to spring up. This is the first half of the set, with the second to be released in 2013. The album is produced by David Bottrill (Tool / Muse / Staind), a wise choice when trying to develop an album around a central concept.

House Of Gold & Bones: Part 1 starts off in a strikingly solid way. The first handful of tracks remind me a lot of the aggressive hard rock that dominated the band’s Come What(ever) May album (2006). ‘Gone Sovereign’ and ‘Absolute Zero’ kick back and forth between a devastating rock track, and a more creative modern rock sound with tremendous ease.

‘Last Of The Real’ and ‘RU486’ try to take it even heavier but, the cold hard fact is, while Corey Taylor is a great singer, he’s terrible at trying to sound like the tough guy and he does way too much of that on the aforementioned tracks. Both songs sound completely contrived and drag the album down a good two notches because they don’t fit at all musically.

The band head in a more positive direction though with some more radio-friendly tunes. Whether you appreciate the big, smooth, anthem sound or not it’s undeniably what Stone Sour is best at. ‘A Rumor Of Skin’ is a killer track both lyrically and musically as the main character tries to decide where to go / what to do to get out of the mental prison he is in. ‘The Travelers, Pt. 1’ and ‘… Pt. 2’ are top tier moments as well. They are very introspective both musically and lyrically and certainly among the more creative musical things the band have offered to date.

For me, the bombastic downward spiral of ‘Influence Of A Drowsy God’ is the spotlight song. With thick guitars and an almost psychedelic sound, the song really captures an atmosphere of questioning and a feeling of wanting a release… any kind of release. The song ebbs and flows through stomping metal, fist-pumping hard rock, and introspective modern rock all in the span of four minutes and 29 seconds. This song really represents all the best points of the album in one shot, causing me to wonder why it didn’t lead the album off.

This is easily Stone Sour’s best album to date. It’s not perfect, but the vast majority of it is equal parts interesting and powerful. Taylor and company do a great job of making you feel what they feel on this one. If they would just give up pretending to have metal tendencies they could really take Stone Sour over the top. The weak heavy parts are like drain clogs that you just have to push through so the album can find its flow again. All in all though, there are some great, great songs here.

Mark Fisher

<< Back to Album & EP Reviews



Related Posts via Categories
Share