Sandstone Hard Rock / Co. Derry

A band doesn’t release music of this quality without creating demand from fans across Europe to see them live, and the success of Cultural Dissonance created the opportunity for Sandstone to tour across Europe as main support to Tim ‘Ripper’ Owens of Judas Priest fame. Cutting their teeth on the live European circuit, the band rises to the challenge gaining many new fans and admirers on their journey across Europe and Eastern Europe, and adding a charismatic second guitarist to the mix Dee (Kivi) Kivlehan. The tour sees the band grow into a well oiled metal machine and the biggest hit of the tour is their performance of the song Sleep from Cultural Dissonance which takes advantage of the exceptional guitar skills of founding member Stevie and soaring vocals of Sean. The band got on so well with the ex Judas Priest front man that he even offers to perform on their next release.

No sooner is the tour ended and this committed and prolific band are back in the studio putting together the current release Delta Viridian: A semi concept album based loosely on themes from the classic novel Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut. The album deals with such lyrical ideas as religion, nihilism, and mankind’s neurotic infatuation with self destruction and witnesses a consolidation of the band’s unique approach to melodic and sincere story telling over a musical palette of all that’s good in the genres they love. Sandstone make a virtue of walking the fine line between hard rock, power metal and progressive rock, allowing all three approaches to constantly battle each other and never conceding a victor. The result is additively compulsive listening.

After the release of their seminal 4th album Delta Viridian in 2013, and extensive touring, Sandstone took a break to get back to basics and re-imagine the band going forward. Returning in 2021 with their 5th album “Epsilon Sky”, a collection of dark brooding songs that represent a heavier, more sonically coherent, and more confident band. Sit back and take a listen to the song writing intensity and maturity of a band that aren’t afraid to ignore the current trends in the music industry and go wherever their artistic vision takes them. The result: an album for fans of deep thoughtful songs with tasteful and aggressive performances. All packaged up in a tight, all killer – no filler compact gut punch of an album that harks back to the melodic storytelling traditions of their Celtic homeland, forged in an alloy of metal, hard rock and progressive tendencies.