Stonekind – Hollow Ground

by Mark 'Yeti' Richard · January 20, 2025

Stonekind is a stoner rock duo from Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Consisting of Jeff Ayers, Jr on drums and vocals, and Davis Templeton on guitar and bass, Stonekind released their second full length album, Hollow Ground on June 14th 2024. Their prior releases include 2019’s Stonekind EP, and 2021’s Spirit Of The Void. Hollow Ground contains eight tracks at thirty five minutes long and was released on Salem Stone Records.

“Storyteller” opens the album with a pounding menace of heavy riffs and then retreats to a melodic rhythm with excellent vocals. The band capture the essence of dynamics right from the start and deliver a crushing sound that molds stoner rock, heavy psych, doom, with classic rock and heavy metal elements also. They utilize good backing vocals on the chorus for a memorable song that gets everything moving along nicely. The song fades right into “Glass Of Hours”. The spacy and psychedelic sound is ignited with intricate guitar picking which then explodes into a mountain of heavy riffs. The three minute instrumental then becomes “Hollow Ground”, an airy clean guitar sounding introductory passage into the massive fourth cut, “Masters Of Man”. The eight plus minute song begins mellow and builds up from there. Stonekind craft some very interesting sounds which are augmented with fuzzy rhythms and well sung vocals. The band has a penchant for exploring animated sounds to enhance their music. The softer psychedelic harmonies are brilliantly incorporated within the storms of the heavy riffing.

The fifth track “Dune” delivers exuberant desert rock vibes with a QOTSA flavor in the vocals. The fuzzy stomp box riffs are enticed with harmonies of lush psychedelic soundscapes. A very captivating song which hits different levels of audio textures. The short classical guitar sounds of “Veda” is next with chords of subtle dissonance accentuating the melody. It leads us right into the ambitious musical movement of “Dressed As Man”. The song begins euphonious and up tempos into a rich and rhythmic rocking masterpiece. Around five minutes in, Jeff Ayers performs a great drum solo breakthrough which shifts the track into another facet of creativity, heightened with synthesizers. When Davis Templeton unleashes a glorious riff a minute later, the song enters another depth of riff rocking euphoria. The track fades out with clean guitars as naturally as the song intended.

“Echus Chasma” completes the recording with a two minute and twenty second psychedelic journey through space and time. It has a heavy dose of doom to finalize the riffs as the song fades out into silence. The band incorporate excellent guitar leads throughout the whole record also. Stonekind really caught me by surprise, to be honest. After listening to Hollow Ground a number of times all the way through, I am convinced that this band is really talented and underrated. The precise timing and fascinating music that the duo has constructed is very impressive and sonically appealing. I wasn’t expecting this album to be as exceptional and outstanding as it is and Stonekind has a magical formula in song crafting that is very striking and astonishing. Hollow Ground is best experienced by listening from start to finish, in an uninterrupted session. Each song flows into the next exquisitely and the band do a brilliant job combining shorter and lengthier songs together. Stonekind are now on my radar for artists to keep an eye on. Their other past releases are exceptional also. This album is amazing and would have been on my top twenty list for the year, had I heard it sooner.