CD review WHITE STONES 'Kuarahy'

White Stones is the brainchild of Opeth bassist Martin Mendez. He started White Stones as a musical project and soon it became obvious that it’s more than that. It was a journey back to the Uruguayan roots of the bass player, roots when it comes to family as well as music.

White Stones, that’s the translation of the city Mendez comes from and ‘Kuarahy’ is the word that stand for ‘sun’ in his mother tongue, being the symbol on the flag of Uruguay.

The song writing process started to become more tangible in the days after Opeth’s ‘Sorceress’-tour. The cool thing with these songs is that some of them were just floating creativity for a while and first tunes were writing pure for the fun of it. It was the move from Stockholm to Barcelona that acted as a kind of trigger to start-up things in a more concrete way. It was this step that brought the bass player closer again to his origin.

One step let to another and now we can welcome the solo debut of the talented bass player. White Stones’ album contains interesting and exciting music. In a wider sense it can be described as Death Metal, mainly because of the growls by Eloi Boucherie. But it’s more than that, making the album special. There are the progressive structures and layered sounds that represent musical depth. ‘Kuarahy’ isn’t just a musical punch in the face. It offers instead thought-though compositions with subtile darkness that’s embedded throughout. There are moments when Opeth-influences can be heard but there are also the Latin American elements that impact the songs too.

To sum up: Martin Mendez steps out of the shadows and stands with White Stones in the spotlight with a first proof of work that shows that the Uruguayan musician has much more to offer than merely a solid grooving bassline for Opeth. ‘Kuarahy’ is a multi-layered album that shows the songwriting talent of a guy that hid this talent for too long.