Bringing in their an overdose of shredded guitar melodies and a yearning vocal thread, Simple Stone have created a hell of a record with just the right amount of diversity.
While largely comprised of hard-hitting rock tracks, there’s a pop vein running throughout Chronicles of a Faded Heart which makes me feel like a grittier Polish Club fan would happily jump on board.
Chronicles of a Faded Heart from Simple Stone is gritty and passionate, with lulls in tempo and aggression that take it out of a furious fantasy and into something with real direction.
With just the right amount of dirty fury, there’s something here for more than just an audience of metalheads. Key tracks Tonight and Firefly are testament to this.
Interestingly the album features a change in bass for just one of the songs, Losing You, not noticeable on the first listen but apparent once you are aware of the fact.
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Miss You, as the name implies, follows a much softer path, hanging onto the fast guitar and powerful drums but also featuring orchestral arrangement. The record takes an unexpected yet welcome turn here, engaging in a diversity which for the first five tracks, I didn’t see as a possibility.
These guys seem to love a furious intro, and with the rest of the record this remains true. One defiant crescendo, you can almost hear Simple Stone shouting “I dare you to turn the volume down” time and time again.
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The album presents itself as one of emotional dissection, cutting and pasting the hard times of relationships, feelings of loneliness and resentment amongst a cathartic optimism that cannot be disguised. A fantastic mutation to the common man’s hard rock.
Closing tracks 196 and 2nd Place are solid finishers. True to style and without catharsis, they sum the record up as an instrumentally solid one. Definitely a band with promise, and one, which I anticipate, would give a great live show.
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While Chronicles of a Faded Heart is most definitely true to the band’s self-prescribed hard rock label, their willingness to divert onto a road less travelled shines through. It’s mature songwriting with a ragged periphery, safe to say we’re on the edge of our seat for the next round of cuts from this Herculean Sydney trio.
Want to catch Simple Stone live? The band will be clocking into Dicey Ricey’s Hotel in Wollongong on July 15th along with The Dirty Earth and Watchmoore. Grab all the details here.
Chronicles of a Faded Heart is available now.
