Photo: Gaël Mathieu
French sludge and post-metal flag-bearers STONEBIRDS unleash the breathtaking title track taken from their third album 'Collapse and Fail', coming out on July 24th via Ripple Music. Get your soul crushed and dragged away from the modern world now!
STONEBIRDS about this new song: "Collapse and Fail is the darkest and heaviest song we ever wrote since our beginnings. In this song we deal with the fact that human beings have this incredible faculty to surprise us with their ability to get more cowardly, weak and disappointing each day. This is our vision of the current state of humanity."
With title track "Collapse And Fail", the Breton trio demonstrate an advanced handling of elemental forces, somewhere between Neurosis' '"Fires Within Fires" and Isis' majestic post-metal manifesto "Oceanic". Atmospheric and meditative parts lead into dark inner worlds, until a brutal sludge onslaught drags you away from your own thoughts. Then comes the sacred calm before the storm again, before the song reaches an absolutely shattering climax, in the vein of their mighty peers of Amenra.
This third album 'Collapse and Fail' is undoubtedly STONEBIRDS' darkest album to date: an excruciating piece of hopelessness that depicts the horror we’re collectively facing. Throughout forty minutes of sharp-edged sludge and post-metal hopelessness, the trio delivers a complex, masterfully brutal, yet at times ethereal piece of music, letting their sorrowful vision echo a dismal collective fate. It's too late, and all that is left is a burning violence. STONEBIRDS also released a video for "Stay Clean", which you can view at this location.
STONEBIRDS is a French trio formed in 2008 and based in Central Britanny, a land that has never stopped inspiring their songwriting and distinctive sound. Abandoned villages and inhabitants, all left behind by modern economy, ghostly places haunted both by ancient tales and contemporary rural distress, oppressive dampness, stormy light… These images are nourishing an anguished and tormented doom metal, giving birth to 2015’s debut album 'Into The Fog… And The Filthy Air'. This record saw the band making their own way in between sludge, psychedelic/prog rock and post-metal — a feeling confirmed with its 2017 follow-up 'Time'. This sophomore album is more radical, contrasted, alternating massive metal riffs and light-infused arpeggios, all drenched in poisonous reverb. Drawing its luminous heaviness from Yob and Cult Of Luna, the Breton trio won over sludge and doom fans by playing prestigious Hellfest, Motocultor and supporting the likes of Ufomammut, Mars Red Sky, Glowsun or Alunah.
