Stonetree – Void Fill CD EP

Stonetree is an Austrian group that emanates from Gmunden, a town located in Upper Austria. Since their beginnings in 2015, the group has recorded a solid debut album named The Tempest, with ten compositions that span over all possible subgenres of rock music. This year has been pretty wild for everyone, and the vast majority of bands suffered a lot due to the situation with the pandemic. Stonetree wisely used the quarantine and isolation to write, compose, arrange, and record four brand new songs. These four songs have finally seen the light of the day under the name Void Fill. Perhaps the group wants to describe this year as a giant void, an amalgam of various unfortunate situations and circumstances, and their most advanced compositions are filling that void with colossal riffages and dynamics.

Whatever may be the case, Stonetree is nailing it down once again with tremendous musicianship, which is undoubtfully hearable throughout the entire material. The group mainly explores the essentials of stoner rock music, but their orchestrations are unveiling even more elements along the way as these compositions are passing like a heavy steam engine powered machinery. Besides stoner rock, you may hear the essentials of alternative, grunge, psychedelic, and progressive rock. Stonetree levitates between all these genres with such ease, so their sound mostly appears massive, dense, rich, but also expanses into something greater when necessary. Their ideas are striking the listening apparatus with a series of polyphonous maneuvers, while the thoughtfully designed arrangements are performing one of the crucial roles. These arrangements are grasping all their ideas into the singularity, separated into four profoundly engaging rock numbers.

The effects of southern rock upon the band members are vividly hearable, and their music unquestionably showcases how heavily influential this genre was during the creative process. Still, Stonetree includes the fuzziness of grunge, accentuations borrowed from alternative rock, and some technicalities characteristic for progressive rock. The subtle melancholics are aesthetically surrounding this material, but also covering these orchestrations with the polyphonous atmosphere. Brilliantly performed lead vocals are floating somewhere between southern rock accentuations and psychedelic chants, while the occasional singalongs are giving more depth to particular parts included within these compositions. Stonetree gave their best to stack up as many decorations as possible within this material, so the group undoubtfully succeeded in their attempt.

Void Fill represents the progress of a Stonetree, demonstrated through four tremendously performed rock songs. The group managed to stack up loads of entertaining guitar shreds, melodies, rhythmical maneuvers into cleverly arranged numbers that will suit the admirers of rock music and its subgenres. Void Fill comes on a compact disc housed in a cardboard sleeve, but it’s also available on Spotify and YouTube. Pick up your favorite music carrier and enjoy these tunes at high volume.