Stone Sour – House of Gold and Bones Part 2

After last year’s critically acclaimed return from Stone Stour, the second part to Corey Taylor’s story driven concept album arrives and carries with it a continuing maturity of the band both lyrically and musically.

Concept albums are ridiculously difficult things to pull off successfully in the world of music. While I can understand the need to split this story between two albums, the break between them does demand you get back to Part I and refresh your mind before Part II throws you back into the mix. It does so with Red City pretty much assuming you know what’s come before. It’s less an album opener and more like the melancholic start to the second part of a film, setting the scene towards its conclusion. It’s atmospheric, it’s haunting, it’s soulful and throughout this second part of the story these feelings run deep from track to track.

Even when Stone Sour crank it up and throw out the heavy you still feel that feeling of being trapped and alone with the anger and tension that brings running underneath. They also seem to be able to turn their hand to evoking particular emotions in each track, be it the trapped anguish of Black John, the melancholy of Sadist or the clawing redemption of ’82 that brings to mind Breaking the Silence from Queensryche’s own concept masterpiece, Operation Mindcrime.

Uncanny Valley feels like the start of the long road back to salvation, with Blue Smoke and Do Me A Favor taking the inevitable moment to look back and reflect (both in very different ways) before the album comes to a stirring and uplifiting end.

It’s hard to review this as a stand alone piece when, at the end of the day, it’s the second part of a concept album. To invest in the storyline you need to invest in two albums worth of material and the world that comes with it. Looking at this from a music only perspective, storyline aside, it’s Stone Sour adding another notch to their bow. At times the album feels like a sprawling landscape of styles and emotions. Invest time in the story and you’ll see it all comes together to great effect too.

House of Gold and Bones Part II is released on 8 April 2013 through Roadrunner Records

Rating: 8/10

Track Listing:
1. Red City
2. Black John
3. Sadist
4. Peckinpah
5. Stalemate
6. Gravesend
7. ’82
8. The Uncanny Valley
9. Blue Smoke
10. Do Me a Favor
11. The Conflagration
12. The House of Gold & Bones

STONE SOUR are:
Corey Taylor – Vocals
James Root − Guitar
Josh Rand − Guitar
Shawn Economaki – Bass
Roy Mayorga – Drums

LINKS:
www.stonesour.com
www.houseofgoldandbones.com
www.facebook.com/stonesour