New Song: The Stone of Rome (Lyrical and Unlyrical Versions)

The Stone of Rome – Josh Montague

(Studio version link)

On writing a cold symphony about roads, ruin, and what’s left after the fire

“the road marking nothing—nothing but stone.”

That’s where this song begins. The Stone of Rome is my attempt to sing from inside the ruin—where history isn’t a chapter heading but dust in your lungs, marble under your feet, and the echo of legions in an empty forum. It’s the lyrical version of a piece I first heard as shapes and shadows—sharp intervals, restrained melody, and a pulse that felt like marching feet disappearing into ash. (There will be a link below to a purely instrumental, unlyrical version if you want the ashes without the breath.)

A cold symphony

The arrangement is intentionally spare: voice, guitar, and a low, almost-bell-like drone that keeps returning like a winter wind. I wanted the production to feel cold—not lifeless, but precise, unblinking. Reverbs ring like stone halls; consonants hit like chisels. Every silence is another column fallen.

Rome, the fall, the ash

The lyrics circle three images: stone (endurance, weight), ash (afterburn, memory), and road (movement, empire, direction). Rome isn’t just a place here; it’s the pattern of building something so monumental it forgets its own edges. It’s also the pattern of watching that monument fracture, then living among the fragments.

A short lyric glimpse

(excerpt)

the road is marked with nothing, nothing but stone
the coal in homes the fromes in romes
nothing nothing but stone
in rome
but then you stare back at me
like a cold symphony
just to see the way to be
is not of you nor of me
of rome
of the fall
they will last
the ruin lash
the time of mast, the very last
the ruin lash
oh the ash

Two versions, two temperatures

• Lyrical (this post): vocals pull the narrative forward, giving the imagery a spine.
• Instrumental (linked below): a stripped, “unlyrical” mirror. No words, just the cold architecture—the harmonic ruins themselves. If you want to hear the fall without the witness, that’s the door.

Compositional bones

• Meter & feel: a steady, processional pulse—almost ritualistic—juxtaposed with syncopated guitar accents that crack the marble surface.
• Harmony: modal minor with deliberate tension notes—intervals that refuse easy resolution, like history that never quite closes.
• Dynamics: it never explodes; it tightens. The song shrinks the listener into the corridors, rather than blasting them with spectacle.

Why Rome?

Because Rome is the universal shorthand for rise, rule, ruin, residue. You don’t need a map to understand it. You just need to feel the weight of something massive that eventually can’t hold itself up. That’s not just empire-talk—that’s personal, creative, digital, social. Things swell, ossify, fall, and leave us with artifacts. This song is one of those artifacts.

Listen, compare, decide

If you’re drawn to lyrical narrative, take this version first. If you want the bones without the voice, hit the instrumental. Or do both, in either order, and notice which one makes the other colder—or warmer.

Thanks for listening, for reading, and for walking these old roads with me.

—Josh

P.S.
This is the first version—unedited, unproduced. Just the core idea as it came. Someday I might shape it into a fuller production, or maybe add layers and polish. But for now, it lives in this early form—bare and honest.