Canadian duo The Blue Stones are back with their ass-kicking fourth studio album, “Metro.” At 16 tracks over 41 minutes long, “Metro” drags listeners down a shadowy, adrenaline-pumping ride through rebellion, self-discovery, and pure authenticity. This experience is an aural subway ride through the underbelly of identity, struggle, and metamorphoses.
The story was never its most powerful element, but a story was there, a narrative of a subway system, of a protagonist in a dystopia fighting a personified version of their darker self. Every stop along the way entails an encounter, a discovery, or a moment of reckoning. It is an album that demands answers.
The record’s outstanding single, “Happy Cry,” is ultimately at the helm. It is a rousing exhortation gushing with cathartic vigor and soaring vocalism. The song encapsulates the notion of releasing emotional baggage and surrendering to the peace that comes with the chaos of life. It’s about finding acceptance and closure in things you cannot change. The track notes the excitement of new chapters as it also takes a moment to embrace the bruises of the past.
Other standouts include the atmospheric “Lose My Name,” “Scared of the Dark,” and explosive “Metro47,” which are draped in moody instrumentation and a mixture of bluesy rock and alternative grit, a classic The Blue Stones combination. “Come Apart” and “Kill Box” challenge the limits of their sound, crafting hard-hitting anthems that are both rebellious and intimately self-aware.
A fixture of University life and beyond, Tarek Jafar (vocals/guitar) and Justin Tessier (drums) are no strangers to rocking shows in small-town bars and headlining stages at rock temples. “Metro” is proof of that journey, brave, unapologetic, and dripping in authenticity that can only come from lived experience. With “Metro,” The Blue Stones show listeners what definitively separates them from being musicians to storytellers, architects that constructed a route where each track is a train stop and every lyric is a ticket into self-exploration.
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