LORDS OF THE STONE were a Doom Metal band from the Netherlands, forming in 1992 and only lasting until 1998.  During that time they only released one full length, "Nightflowers," but they also recorded four demos; three before "Nightflowers" debuted and one afterwards. These four demos have been collected into this compilation album called "Roses For The Dead." As far as demos go, all the tracks have a pretty decent sound quality.  Doom works best with a bit of grittiness to the production anyway.  The tracks flow pretty well despite obviously being from different eras and lineups of the band. Musically, this is Doom Metal's Doom.  From beginning to end, it is just crushing riff after crushing riff.  It does indeed have a big of atmospheric/Gothic feel to it, especially in the later tracks.

After a nice acoustic intro, the first proper track, "The Quest," begins. If you quest is searching for huge riffs and pounding drums, then this track is the answer. It opens with a huge, desolate riff and opens to a sprawling wasteland of thick but groovy guitar.  Vocally, Andre reminds me of a heavier mixture of Lemmy Kilmister and Paul Di'Anno.   He doesn't use real death growls but his vocals aren't exactly clean but he goes along nicely with the music. "Fire In The Winter," is a crushing song with one of the heaviest main riffs I have ever heard in the genre.  It has a touch of old school 70's Metal/Doom to it and provides a nice offset to the dark nature of the song. The song speeds up a bit a little over halfway thru to allow a well-played guitar solo to shine through the dense fog of riffs.  A lot of Doom doesn't tend to focus on guitar solos, but the ones on this album are always well done and a pleasure to listen to.

"The Oldest Dance," has a heavy as hell bass line, one of that vibrates and shatters the atmosphere only to be rebuild with a monster of a riff.  The drums really compliment the song, as do the dual male/female vocals.  This song is really heavy with Gothic atmosphere; people who like old THEATRE OF TRAGEDY, TRISTANIA, PARAMECIUM, and DRACONIAN will find a lot to like on this one. MARTINE provides the lovely female vocals.  She appears throughout the songs but featured more heavily in the later demos. This is a great collection of songs and I can only hope it is successful enough for their debut to be re-released as well.  If you are a Doom fanatic like me, I would definitely add this to your collection.