For the past ten years, The Cold Stares have toured the world relentlessly as a duo, blowing away audiences across the US and Europe with a fierce, blistering live show that belied their bare bones, guitar-and-drums setup. Now, the band is embracing a whole new kind of chemistry as they launch their next chapter, adding a third member and channeling the classic power trio sound they grew up on with their explosive new album, Voices.

“The chains were off when we made this record,” says guitarist/singer Chris Tapp. “Suddenly, all the parameters that had dictated what we could and couldn’t do just disappeared and we were free to create whatever sound we wanted.”
That sense of total artistic liberation lies at the heart of Voices, which pushes The Cold Stares’ signature mix of blues, southern, and hard rock to bold new heights. Recorded almost entirely over the course of just two days with producer/engineer/mixer Mark Needham (Taj Mahal, The Killers, Imagine Dragons, Walk the Moon, Fleetwood Mac), the album stands as the band’s most mature, eclectic collection yet, balancing gritty muscle and tender emotion in equal measure. It would have been easy for Tapp and drummer Brian Mullins to simply crank the volume here, but instead they make the most of bassist Bryce Klueh’s arrival by getting more nuanced and adventurous in their approach, chasing a raw, unvarnished sound that manages to feel both vintage and modern all at once. Add it all up and you’ve got a gutsy, cinematic record that’s as honest as it is exhilarating, a high-octane dose of unadulterated rock and roll that tips its cap to everything from Cream to Led Zeppelin as it reckons with love and loss, sin and redemption, hope and regret.
“A lot of these tunes deal with really personal things that have been on my mind for a while,” says Tapp. “I just had to live enough life and get enough experience under my belt to know how to talk about them, to know how to feel comfortable opening up those veins and sharing whatever came out.”

That maturity is obvious on Voices, which opens with the fuzzed out ’60s rocker “Come For Me.” Like much of the album, the tune walks a tightrope between swaggering bravado and raw vulnerability, with primal, snarling guitar riffs snaking around deeply personal lyrics.