Stone Diamond, the Cologne rock quartet around dentist, singer, bassist and producer Cyrus Alamouti, enters the next album round with "Don't Believe What You Think". Spoken in old vinyl terms: From the inlet to the outlet groove, this third album is an absolutely round thing. You hear songs that still deserve this name. The storytelling is charming and the musical performance and implementation is excellent in all respects. Voice leading, Question & Answer technique, the choirs, the daring, often completely crazy guitar solos, the instrumental and musical ideas, a song dramaturgy that still knows the delay, compression and increase, the complexity of every single song - as a listener you cannot get out of the amazement. Stone Diamond, active since 2013, was originally a trio, with Alamouti, Marc Sch?fers (gtr, voc) and Pete Hensen (drums), who on his debut "We Stole The Stars From The Black Night" was still committed to a bluesy, hard-boiled rock. In 2014 the album "Phoenix" was released, which opened stylistically in the direction of pop. With the addition of Athanassio's "Zaki" Kiokakis, the Cologne-Greek guitar master, to the quartet, the band found the current line-up and stylistic breadth: Rock, Pop, Funk, Alternative, R&B, Soul... The band uses influences from the most diverse genres to create their very own style amalgam. They could be located in New Orleans, Seattle or Atlanta. Or a proximity to KISS, Prince, the Doobie Brothers, the Red Hot Chili Peppers and others. But one can also simply say: "Don't Believe What You Think" is absolutely successful - varied, exciting, multicoloured, a real album. Two of the gentlemen live from making music and participated in numerous formations. Marc is a civil publisher, Cyrus runs a dental center. They are all full professionals in music. At any time you can feel the irrepressible joy of playing, the desire for handmade music, for analogue interaction. Keyword analog: The new album was made in the legendary Dierks Studios. There the analogue world - from the venerable Solid State Logic mixer to the sought-after Neumann microphones - is still in order. Under the direction of Ulli Pallemanns (Yello, Robbie Williams) the song material was recorded live and then further processed and refined. "Don't Believe What You Think" develops a great attraction and is - the more often you hear it - more and more fun. Listen, shut down, press start again and again...
