Announcement!

Announcement-

We want to thank all our fans who voted for us last week in Classic Rock Magazine and let you know that “The Great Unknown” won #1 track of the week. We recently did an interview with the world’s best rock magazine, so look for that in the February issue. Pretty surreal to a couple guys from small town Kentucky. Thank you TCS fans!

Hear “The Great Unknown” on Spotify!

The album “Mountain” available for purchase at these digital outlets.

“Mountain” Available on cd and vinyl at our squareup store!

The reviews are in for Mountain!

The reviews are in! Check out The Cold Stares new Album “MOUNTAIN” featuring tracks from TNT’s Animal Kingdom, ESPN, the NFL, X-Games and Monster Energy today!

“A Blues Rock Cacophony with no filler!”- TML
“Aesthetically evocative and creatively diverse”- No Depression Magazine
“A breakthrough moment for their craftsmanship and a sound that they’ve truly made their own”- Indie Rock Review
“Entrancing and unpredictable”- The Music Review
ON SPOTIFY AND ITUNES NOW!

The Cold Stares on Spotify!

The Cold Stares on Apple Music!

Request “Sleeping With Lions” here- SiriusXM Octane

Great review of “Mountain” from Neufutur.com!

Blown away by the reviews that continue to come in on “Mountain”. If you haven’t heard our new album check it out today- Link in comments.

“Mountain is a creative quantum leap for this pair of indie rock darlings who successfully transition from underground obscurity into the primetime with this new treasure chest of soulful blues anthems”
Neufutur.com review of Mountain
Request “Sleeping With Lions” here- SiriusXM Octane

We are on Joe Bonamassa’s personal playlist!

*When you get an alert that your song has been added to a playlist just to see that it’s one of your heroes playlists. Our friend Mr. @joebonamassa has us in one of his personal lists on Spotify and if you aren’t following it you should be, right now! Thank you Joe for keeping the Blues and guitar rock alive and pulling so many others up with you when you have absolutely no obligation to do so. #gentleman

Request it here! –> Sirius XM –>SiriusXM Octane

The Cold Stares – “Mountain” on Spotify

“Sleeping with Lions” added as #1 song to Rota Rock spotify Brazil playlist

Driving to meet Brian for an interview with a soon to be named Rock Magazine when I get an email saying “Sleeping With Lions” has been added to the brand new “Rota Rock” Spotify Brazil Playlist. And in spot #1! That puts our new single in 15 editorial playlists on 4 continents. So much happening behind the scenes right now that we will be sharing soon. Thank you to all our fans out there that continue to share and tell people about our new album. We share this new success with you!

Sleeping with Lions on Spotify

Indie Music Review of Mountain

Another fantastic review of Mountain in. So happy this album is connecting with fans and critics alike. Very proud that we also worked the production and made the calls on this one ourselves, bit of confidence there.
From Indie Music Review

“I would even go as far as to argue that these compositions seem much more thoughtful and tempered than their predecessors did, which tells me that The Cold Stares have matured substantially in the last couple of years. Their new record is a breakthrough moment for their craftsmanship and a sound that they’ve truly made their own, and as a blues fan myself I couldn’t be more pleased with its tremendously gratifying content.”
Find “Mountain” by The Cold Stares here-
On Spotify
or here-
On Amazon

On my way down

On My Way Down

I heard a whisper on a rainy day
Come child and hear what I have to say…
I am the cause, I am the autumn moon
I bring the change that hangs around till June

Don’t follow me, on my way down
Old winding roads, full of thorns on the ground
Listen to the song the sweet piper plays
Just around the bend we will find the way

Mockingbird in a willow tree
Black hound standing right next to me
Summer breeze sings and calls my name
It’s too early for the seasons change

Don’t follow me, on my way down
Old winding roads, full of thorns on the ground
Listen to the song that the sweet piper plays
Just around the bend we will find the way

My brother lays in an open grave
Just past the brook on an winters’ day
Look at the trees how they bend and sway
Right past the moon is the light of day

Don’t follow me, on my way down
Old winding roads, full of thorns on the ground
Listen to the song that the sweet piper plays
Just around the bend we will find the way

-Chris Tapp @Copyright 2018

A great review of “Mountain” from Indiesource.com!

And yet another great review on “Mountain”- Happy Monday, now let’s get to the rock and roll…

IndieSource Review of Mountain

“In “Way Gets Dark,” one of the more homespun acoustic tracks to behold on The Cold Stares’ awesome new alternative blues juggernaut Mountain, the band doesn’t rely on imagistic lyrics alone to create a visual experience to accompany the music. The eerie echo of the lightly plucked strings sends a chilling sense of danger in our direction, and the lack of emotion in lead singer Chris Tapp’s voice kills any comfortability that his warm southern drawl may have provided. It’s like the path in front of us is literally getting darker; we’re trapped in this dry but sharply tuned mix next to the guitar, our minds left to wander after the crisp melody that could be waiting just beyond the horizon.
Mountain is driven by its evocative soundscapes, which appear when we’re least expecting them. At fifteen tracks, this is a monstrous LP that offers plenty of intriguing moments for newcomers to The Cold Stares’ sound to get acquainted with their style, but its cohesive, somewhat progressive qualities are what will satisfy the group’s longtime fans more than anything else. As incredibly different in rhythm as “Cold Black Water” and “The Plan” are, they play together in this record flawlessly, as if they were two sides of the same coin. What they have in common is the jarring, neo-noir soundscape that we’re greeted with in track one, “The Great Unknown,” and unable shake for the duration of the record.
I found myself taken aback when I discovered that The Cold Stares are comprised only of singer/guitarist Chris Tapp and drummer Brian Mullins. The abrasive “Stickemup” gets started with a colorful little guitar tizzy that sounds like an amalgamation of several string instruments layered on top of each other, while Mullins’ drum kit sounds twice the size of any other I’ve heard lately. “Wade In The Darkness,” “Gone Not Dead,” and really any of the heavier tracks on the record feel so much more mechanical in their execution than what I was expecting, and yet they’re so far removed from the digitalized sound of robotic pop/rock that even the most subtle differences between their melodies and that of their contemporaries is hard to ignore in these songs.
The most somber moment in Mountain ironically might also be The Cold Stares’ most triumphantly reverent so far – “Under His Command,” a Gothic folk ballad that brands us with a smoky vocal by Tapp that plays more like an epitaph than it does a rock song. His words stick to the paper thin strings like glue, and wherever his prose takes them, they melodically respond – in the gauntest of minor keys. This is my favorite song on the record, not because of any machismo-fueled rock luster, but because of its dark, witty minimalism.
I think that the best way to experience Mountain is to listen to its fifteen songs from beginning to end in the chronological order that The Cold Stares’ arranged them. In what can only be described as an operatic approach to making a bluesy garage rock record, this album starts off with a sonic beat down (“The Great Unknown” and more modest “Friend of Mine”), escalates to more methodical, emotional grounds (“Under His Command,” and “Stickemup”) before letting the harmonies go off the rails (“Gone Not Dead,” “Wade in the Darkness,” and the bone-rattling “Child of God”) and giving into this duo’s penchant for fusing nimbly wound rock songs into analogue-style blues rants (“Cold Black Water,” “Two Keys and a Good Book” and “Killing Machine” just to name some highlights). There’s a lot for music enthusiasts to ponder in this album, but there’s just as much excitement for casual fans to discover in its intricately stylized songs as well.”

Mountain on Spotify!