Stonus Premiere Video for Title-Track of New LP Space to Dive
Cypriot heavy rockers Stonus will release Space to Dive on March 20 as their first offering through Ripple Music. And ‘space’ is definitely a factor, but whether that’s cosmic or room to let the tones breathe depends on a given part or song in the 10-track/49-minute procession. It’s the first studio offering Stonus have made since 2021’s Séance EP (review here), and it continues the thread of the now-five-piece finding their niche somewhere between the classic and the modern, the grounded and the psychedelic, the meditative and the party. That they open with their second longest track in “Berlin” tells the listener they’re looking for immersion, and the ebbs and flows across that stretch stand as analog for the record as a whole, with a fuzzy drift and shove echoed later by the penultimate “The Hermit,” which owing to its place as the apex of the LP, is denser tonally and ‘bigger’ feeling. More room. They even dare a bit of crush there, handling the album-closer role with “Steiermark” — named for the Austrian state one finds Graz; clearly they’ve been traveling — as a markedly quieter epilogue.
Space to Dive is the band’s second full-length and will likely be the introduction for some listeners. Not unreasonable. What you need to know is that the cohesion it presents in songs like the title-track, or “Psychoactive Baby” with vocalist Kyriacos Frangoulis calling to mind Dave Wyndorf corralling the void to his whims, or the trades in “In Loop” that go from empty space to fuller movement before a slow, shimmering lead line draws you through the second half with a nod, etc., is not happenstance. Rather, that cohesion is the result of an intentional creative progression on the part of the band. With hints of prog-metal in some of its starts and stops and aggressive undertones, “Colours” builds on the mountainous tones of “Follow Me,” but the point is through songwriting, touring and sundry other factors that round out to ‘effort on their part,’ Stonus have become able to tie disparate ideas together through shared elements of melody and 
groove. On Space to Dive, they do this while seeming to wear their heart on their collective sleeve, and so the results are doubly impactful for the emotional aspect running alongside a sound that can be rich or minimal depending on where the song is going.
In the case of lead single “Hope Dose,” it’s a more rocking place, but the title-track (video premiering below) takes that fluidity and brings it more into focus. Like “Berlin” — and it’s next in the tracklisting, so I’m not just sitting the title-track alongside the opener — “Space to Dive” is nigh on hypnotic, but it’s also shorter and more accessible. Maybe the story of the record is Stonus finding a place for themselves in that balance. They loosely follow an ethic of keeping the shorter songs toward the beginning and the longer ones on side B, and sure enough some of the more into-the-beyond fare is late, but it’s not so black and white as a mullet structure — business up front, party in the back — and that doesn’t withstand either “Berlin” at the outset (which is longer) and “Steiermark” at the end, but that speaks double to the band’s intention. It’s not just about separating different sides of what they do, but about the places their music goes, the room it occupies at any given moment and where it’s headed from there. That hypnosic state in “Berlin” comes back around in the procession through “In Loop” and the album’s longest cut “Tangerine” and even “The Hermit” as the record winds down by branching out, and all the while Stonus maintain a distinctive sense of craft.
Yes, some of their influence comes from their Mediterranean background, but that makes the story they’re telling — ultimately one of journeying, going; the album starts in one place and ends in another, aurally and in the titles — that much more human, because they’re the ones telling it, and rather than a cold execution of genre elements, Stonus put themselves in the songs, and it’s from this that much of Space to Dive‘s identity is constructed. That the band are geographically spread out, as the PR wire discusses below, makes a whole lot of sense in terms of the sprawl in their sound, but there is no part of the album that feels any more incongruous than they want it to. That is, when they turn around in “Space to Dive” and bring in the shoutier vocals to smack you upside your entranced head, they know what they’re doing and it’s happening the way it’s meant to. I invite you to keep this intentionality in mind as you listen and watch the video here.
PR wire info follows, because thoroughness. Please enjoy:
Stonus, “Space to Dive” video premiere
Stream: https://found.ee/stonus_spacetodive
Straight from the depths of the Mediterranean Sea, Cyprus heavy rock torchbearers STONUS return with their sophomore full-length “Space to Dive” this March 20th on Ripple Music!
Recorded at Wreck It Sound Studios in Corinth, in collaboration with Johnny S.A. (former 1000mods), “Space to Dive” captures the fiery quintet at the peak of their creativity. The mastering, handled by legendary engineer Howie Weinberg (Nirvana, QOTSA, Deftones, Kyuss, Metallica), adds both sonic depth and a rare prestige to the final work. The visual world of the album was crafted by Kamil Czapiga of Cosmodernism, whose mastery of cymatics translates sound into geometry with alchemical precision.
Despite the challenges of being spread across three countries whilst touring and working simultaneously, the realisation of this concept proved essential to the band. “Space to Dive” stands as both a personal reckoning and a universal exploration – an invitation to dive inwards to better understand the whole.
STONUS “Space To Dive”
Out March 20th on Ripple Music – PREORDER: https://stonusofficial.bandcamp.com/album/space-to-dive
Tracklisting:
1. Berlin
2. Space to Dive
3. Follow Me
4. Colours
5. Psychoactive Baby
6. Hope Dose
7. In Loop
8. Tangerine
9. The Hermit
10. Steiermark
STONUS is
Nikolas Frangoulis – Guitar
Kyriacos Frangoulis – Vocals
Kotsios Demetriades – Drums
Pavlos Demetriou – Guitar
Alaa Albaharna – Bass, Additional Vocals
