Stone Gods – Silver Spoons & Broken Bones

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Pias UK
Produced by Dan Hawkins & Nick Brine

Stone Gods didn’t have much of a job on their hands to get rock fans interested in hearing what they would deliver. Three-quarters of The Darkness was enough to intrigue people in the hope that what they produced would be more genuine than their previous incarnation.

Now with bassist Richie Edwards taking over the singer/guitarist mantel from departed front-man Justin Hawkins, Darkness drummer Ed Graham and guitarist Dan Hawkins and Graham Coxon‘s bassist Toby MacFarlaine they’ve left the sound, ridiculous look, and songs of The Darkness behind and set out on the road, releasing an EP, while they constructed this debut album, striving to produce something closer to a real hard rock sound.

They succeeded three times out of fifteen. The EP featured two songs to be present on the album, and two exclusive songs. One of these, title track Burn The Witch saw an excellent hard rock riff and wailing vocals guide a solid track through some great solos. The seeds seemed to be sewn for a muscular new rock album. The rest of the EP failed to match it, hitting various degrees of average melodic pop-rock with each attempt.

Burn The Witch opens the album as well and then it’s necessary to wait until track twelve to get another song with any kind of muscle and genuine rock feel. Knight of The Living Dead universally impressed when rolled out live earlier this year and along with Burn The Witch leant a large amount of promise to the forthcoming album, from a hard rock point of view.

Now the album has hit and it’s full of incredibly ordinary, inoffensive background-rock songs like Defend Or Die, You Brought A Knife To A Gun Fight (also on the EP) and especially Start of Something. Worse still, there’s Where You Coming From, which sounds like a Monkeys song with a guitar solo. Lazy Bones could come from any young pop-rock band at the moment and Making It Hard and Wasting Time are both more middle-of-the-road bright pop-rock.

Unfortunately, Burn The Witch, Knight of The Living Dead and surprising, grooving album closer Oh Whereo My Beero sound like they were written by a completely different band to the rest of the album. And the band clearly know these are their strongest tracks as well. Uncoincidentally Burn The Witch was the lead track of their debut EP of the same name and Knight of The Living Dead is the first single from the album, and lends its title to their current UK tour.

After all the hype, the promise that Stone Gods would be a real hard rock band, and their huge live reputation, Silver Spoons & Broken Bones is a major disappointment. When this stuff hits the charts fans will think they’re listening to something genuinely heavy, given that bands like Killers are falsely marketed as “rock”. But three good songs isn’t enough for a good album and the over-melodic pop-rock of the rest of the disc damages the band’s rock credentials severely.

“ inoffensive background-rock ”

Tracklist: Burn The Witch / Don’t Drink The Water / Defend Or Die / You Brought A Knife To A Gun Fight / Magdalene Street / Where You Coming From / Lazy Bones / I’m With The Band / Start of Something / Making It Hard / Wasting Time / Knight of The Living Dead / Oh Whereo My Beero

Written by Andy Lye
More: Albums, Hard Rock, Stone Gods