Review Summary: Witness young man cry about the Darkness breaking up in this here review.
Listening to the samples from the website, I was actually pretty excited. Richie Edwards has a solid rock and roll voice. The drumming and bass aren’t anything special, which is no surprise, but the guitars were fun. And Stone Gods make it very clear from the first song, “Burn the Witch,” that they are not the Darkness. The layered guitar intro makes for the epic feel of a more mature band. They’re heavier and Richie’s vocals steal the show.
But midway through “Burn the Witch,” Stone Gods change up the song, trying out a heavy metal riff fest that goes on for another two minutes. Maybe if it was a thirty second jam session it would’ve been fine, but they go on for two whole minutes. The song ends just before I forget everything good that happened in the first two minutes of “Burn the Witch.” Lucky for Stone Gods because nothing else on the EP impresses.
“You Brought a Knife to a Gun Fight” starts off strong as well, the band does well during Richie’s fun verse. And as he screams “you brought a knife to a gun fight,” I get ready for some awesome moment that the band is obviously building up to, but they opt out and scream, all together “So *** you!” I’m left speechless. That’s the best they could come up with? After a cool title like that? So *** you…it’s not badass, it’s not clever, it’s just….ugh.
After that the band just stops trying altogether. They lose any of the heaviness that made the first two songs interesting, they stop anything resembling interesting songwriting. They don’t make bad songs, they don’t make songs that echo the past (* la the Darkness), they just make boring rock noise for a few more minutes (* la Foo Fighters).
I have hope for this band, cautious hope. If they can pull it together and make more songs like “Burn the Witch” and (most of) “You Brought a Knife to a Gun Fight,” they could be a very good band that might even get airplay. But I’m afraid they’ll go the easy road and make boring, tired hard rock music. At least they look better than Justin Hawkin’s new band, British Whale. A diva falsetto without a band that would keep him in check is a disaster waiting to happen.
