Band:	Stone Division
Album:	Six Indifferent Places
Style:	Hard rock, Heavy metal
Release date:	June 2014

01. Halo
02. As One
03. Torn
04. With All Means
05. All Hope Is Gone?
06. Time
07. My World
08. The Unknown
09. War Love
10. Angels
11. Collide

Holy Nickelback, Batman. This is going to be a bumpy ride. Right off the bat we're greeted with the latest hard rock singer to stamp his best James Hetfield impersonation over four minutes of riff. It's like listening to an audition for the next Godsmack.

Not content with the Plain Jane hard rock game, Stone Division incorporate some elements that are inexplicably metal: harsh vocals, double bass, suspiciously heavy guitars, distinctly flashy leads, and? even some breakdowns? Stone Division use these sparingly, just to add a dash of color to the otherwise unadorned canvas of hard rock mediocrity, but most problematically, neither the hard rock nor the heavy metal side manages to be particularly interesting. The mixing and matching just doesn't flow, nor does it sound natural - more like a rock and roll band discovering lower-range guitars for the first time than a heavy metal band that knows how to use them.

"All Hope Is Gone?", for example, starts out with a couple of chords that, in theory, could constitute a riff, and carries on with some throaty growls, but still within sight of the starting line it turns into Metallica imitating Buckcherry. Stone Division simply cannot decide if they are trying to be Avenged Sevenfold, Breaking Benjamin, or Nickelback; is it a metal band scaling back into radio-friendly summer blockbuster soundtrack rock, or a hard rock band tripping across its boundaries and into a realm it doesn't understand?

Songs like "Time" and "Halo" grate on the ears as only the wholly unimaginative, lame-duck-melodied, generic hard rock pish posh can. Why base a song on a riff that simply doesn't exist, or modulate your chorus the last time around for an extra punch of flaming nitro energy when it never packed a punch to begin with? Of all the songs here (either 11 or 1, depending on your interpretation), "War Love" yields the best result, but only in a moderately-catchy-song-you-wouldn't-mind-hearing-on-the-radio-again-some-time-next-week sort of way.

This brings me back to my Red review; I'm sure I have heard this whole album on the radio before without realizing it. It's melodic and slightly heavy hard rock, and it's bland as hell. Take a shot if you despise interesting music.