Carbonstone deliver a bracing fusion of White Noise and heartbreak in their hard-hitting new single and video — showcasing today on Tinnitist.
It takes a special kind of talent to equate a doomed love affair with a sonic cacophony. But that’s exactly what this Baltimore alt-metal brigade are up to on their current single. Like the poetic equivalent of a lightning round on The $100,000 Pyramid, the relationship post-mortem White Noise sits us down and whisks us through a harrowing rundown of the category Things That Break Up. The top two answers? A failing radio transmission and a once-happy human coupling that’s likewise about to be lost forever.
Drawing from the vast emotional warehouse you’d expect of a band that describes their sound as “industrial alternative metal,” the song merges hard-hitting guitars with catchy vocal hooks and sweeping synths in a way that wrings the full emotional potential out of nu-metal’s melodic heaviness and the harsh alienation of electronica. His voice dripping with the kind of heart-on-sleeve lamentation this music was made for, singer-guitarist Corey James mourns a vanishing love connection that’s dissolving into static as morning turns to daybreak:
“Can’t hear you cutting out
Feels like I’m falling forever
Lost in this upside down
Somewhere I can’t be found
And now this wavelength is severed
We’re nothing but white noise now.”
Listeners are making a big noise about the track. It has landed in the No. 1 spot multiple times on several reporting radio stations, and it recently passed the 13-week mark as the most requested track on Indie Rage Radio. Its melodramatic appeal has only been underlined by a suitably discomfiting video, which the band shot at the Pennsylvania attraction Kim’s Krypt Haunted Mill — inside a giant drainpipe during a vicious January snowstorm. “The entire team did amazing battling the frigid elements and hellish tunnel reverb for hours as the snow continued to pile up around us,” the band says. “And yes, we wore ear protection. Ha!”
White Noise is the latest strike in a blitz of activity Carbonstone launched in 2019, when the band returned from an extended hiatus with a reconfigured lineup. (In addition to James, the group now includes Josh Provencio on guitars, Eric Dee on bass and Ted Hile on drums and programming — with added excitement and embellishment from “Frankie” the Nightmare Hype Bear). The last three years in particular have brought a non-stop barrage of immediately indelible singles, all accompanied by slickly produced videos awash in gothic and/or brutalist imagery. There was 2023’s pounding, imploring Damaged Like You, and before that the haunting Pins & Needles (a duet with Chrystal James of Anoxia) and the aggressively electronic Scream (the video to which racked up over 10,000 views in the first five days).
That’s all been on the heels of the 2021 release of Dark Matter, the band’s first studio album. Its own singles, AM Trauma and Hush, held the No. 1 spot simultaneously on two separate radio stations for well over a month straight. AM Trauma nabbed more than 100,000 spins, and Hush did equally impressive numbers, airing in multiple countries and placing on charts.
In addition to being masters of their own material, the guys in the group have a real knack for reimagining and industrializing the work of others. Dark Matter featured an eye-opening cover of Deftones’ My Own Summer (Shove It), and Carbonstone’s discography of standalone singles includes a novel take on the ’80s classic (I Just) Died in Your Arms by Cutting Crew that earned the praise of that band’s vocalist, Nick Van Eede.
Carbonstone are currently shooting the video for a forthcoming cover of Coolio’s Gangsta’s Paradise while preparing for their second full-length musical manifesto. Still basking in their nomination in the category of Best Metal Band at the 2024 Maryland Music Awards, they continue to melt faces on the live front, adding one victory after another to a year that’s seen them share stages with the likes of Orgy, Cold, Priest, Drowning Pool, Saliva, Adelitas Way, Vampires Everywhere, Nita Strauss and Any Given Sin.
Watch the video for White Noise above, hear more from Carbonstone below, and make yourself heard on their website, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
