Band:	Stone Gods
Album:	Silver Spoons And Broken Bones
Style:	Hard rock, Heavy metal
Release date:	July 2008

01. Burn The Witch
02. Don't Drink The Water
03. Defend Or Die
04. You Brought A Knife To A Gunfight
05. Magdalen Street
06. Where You Comin' From
07. Lazy Bones
08. I'm With The Band
09. Start Of Something
10. Making It Hard
11. Wasting Time
12. Knight Of The Living Dead
13. Oh Where 'O My Beero

Everyone who even knows who The Darkness are would be able to tell you that they pretty much disappeared off the map in 2006 and only reformed back in November 2011. Only die hard fans would be able to tell you what happened to the members of the band after they disappeared, have the albums to prove it and (probably) have been wearing out their CD players listening to their reunion album, Hot Cakes. For the benefit of the curious, when The Darkness fragmented, the lead singer, after going into rehab to recover from his cocaine addiction, would later form a band named Hot Legs and released one album which is a bit "meh", while the rest of the former members of the band would go on to form Stone Gods by moving their then bassist up to rhythm guitar and lead vocals and hiring a new bassist. This is the only album (at the moment of typing) that they released prior to their reunion, although they did finish a second album prior to the reunion of The Darkness which is still to be released. How does it fare overall? Actually, pretty well!

Let's start with the obvious comment: if you enjoyed Justin Hawkins' piercing falsetto, then his absence will be noticed. Go get Hot Legs' album for that or just get Hot Cakes. If you enjoyed the music of the band, then this will be more up your ally. It's darker that The Darkness (pun not intended), as it leans more towards metal than the Queen-meets-AC/DC style of The Darkness (although AC/DC are still a key aspect of the sound of this band). It also doesn't go down the glam track, so people who couldn't take them seriously the first time around should be able to enjoy this.

The songs on this album vary in quality, although some of the best songs sound like they'd have made classic songs by The Darkness and are pretty catchy to boot. "Don't Drink The Water" is pretty good, despite the unnecessary acoustic section, while "Start Of Something" sounds like a Bon Scott-era AC/DC song. I'm also fond of the Beatle-esque song "Magdalen Street" and "Lazy Bones", which shows that, at the very least, these guys are great songwriters. Shame that the unoriginality of most of the band's songs really hurts them, since there are a few songs which don't sound like they were written by another band.

I would also like to admit some surprise at how much I grew to like the lead vocalist in this band. When I first heard of this band, I only listened to one song and I found his vocals a bit one dimensional on it, but, across this record, he modifies his vocals to suit the songs so much that I started to really enjoy his singing voice, just because I knew he could adjust to suit the songs rather than force the songs to suit him. Indeed, I almost feel bad that these guys had to go on hiatus due to the reformation of The Darkness: they were a great band which had the potential to keep going for years without difficulty.

If you don't mind unoriginality, the absence of Justin Hawkins, and found The Darkness a bit softer than you wanted, these guys should fill that gap. It's also worth checking out this album if you like AC/DC.