Release Date July 17th, 2026
Format LP/CD/Digital
Genre Doom/Stoner Metal
Origin Australia
Holystone formed in Brisbane, Australia, as a trio joining melodic doom, desert rock, psychedelic heaviness, and apocalyptic world building, drawing equal energy from low tempo crawl and hypnotic motion. Madison Morris handles bass and vocals, Wolfe Peterson guitar and vocals, and Jonny Pickvance drums, with the alternating voices placing tension inside the band’s low tuned riffing. Each member brought years of touring in Australia and overseas before Holystone began, giving the young band experience beyond its short history. The blindfolds and dark robes used onstage are part of the visual language, turning concerts into severe, immersive performances shaped around dread and occult imagery.
The band’s debut album, "East Of The Sun, West Of The Moon", appeared in March 2024 and used vintage amplifier tones, trance inducing rhythms, and ensemble tracking with all three musicians playing together. Its songs explored celestial worship, funerary customs, and ancient Greek muses, establishing a warmer psychedelic character than the material that followed. Appearances at Nowhere Festival and Psychnight, along with support dates across the Australian heavy underground, marked the period before work began on a second album.
"Accepting Omega", Holystone’s second album, arrives as a self-release, after sessions split between rainy Seattle. That geographical divide is embedded in the production, with compact drums against parched guitar tones, low bass vibration, sludge drag, and the sour edge of alternative metal from the early 1990s. Psychedelic warmth has been cut back, leaving riffs that grind through narrow patterns and long chord decay, with male and female vocals alternating between weary melody, warning, and accusation.
The lyrics centre on Omega, a world ending figure whose approach draws each character from dread into surrender, complicity, and the suspicion that humanity may deserve its own collapse. Anxiety, depression, mortality, existential disgust, surreal cinema, and apocalyptic fiction give the concept substance, though the constant focus on extinction turns several songs into variations of the same emotional descent.
Holystone gains momentum when Jonny Pickvance locks into a blunt desert pulse, Wolfe Peterson lets a riff fray at the edges, and Madison Morris adds a low vocal counterpoint, pulling the trio into one grim current. Similar tempos and circular structures begin merging around the middle, where menace becomes an expected pattern and the philosophical scope shrinks under sustained gloom. The oppressive low end, uneasy vocal interplay, and carefully separated textures leave "Accepting Omega" with a grim aftertaste, though the album needs more rhythmic variation before its darkness can turn from effective to truly consuming.
|7.0
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