Blue Record by Baroness

Baroness - Blue Record (2009) Review by Matthew Grant Anson Baroness from Savannah, Georgia is a metal band that likes to keep things simple. Their three EPs are conveniently titled First, Second and Third. With the release of their latest brand of progressive sludge metal, Blue Record, their follow up to their 2007 debut Red Album, they even keep things color coded. But outside of the album titles, that is where the simplicity ends. In 2007, Baroness finally released its debut album, Red Album, to the world. Well received in almost all metal circles was considered a solid debut by a band that had been showing flashes of its talent in its trio of EPs. The album even garnered attention outside of the extreme metal world of music when it received Album of the Year honors from the magazine Revolver. But Blue Record completely, and without a doubt, tops all of this. Baroness took the best elements of Red Album and enhanced them into something more. The simple explorations of a few seemingly dissident chords slowly become riffs as the songs progress and the intensely focused songwriting is something new Baroness has brought to the table. On Red Album, the only fault that could be found was sometimes the band would become lost exploring the different types of distortions their amps and pedals could make. This left behind an album that somehow made the clashing riffs combine into a good record, but the lack of focus left room for improvement. Consider the improvement done. The musical focus has not only been improved upon, it has been made into a strength on Blue Record. Every densely laid down riff, crashing cymbal and pounding drum has a place and serves a purpose in each song. The album is clearly designed to stand as a singular body of work; this is not music designed with a single in mind or to have tracks individually purchased. Throughout Blue Record, there are introduction tracks that serve as launching pads into the actual songs. While it is true thattrue that for many bands, interlude songs are just fillers to reach a random track number quota, this isn't true here. The interlude tracks are all a necessary part of Blue Record. Blue Record is not 12 songs; it is a forty-four minute album. Until this point, Baroness has always been compared to its former label mate and forerunner of the progressive sludge metal genre, Mastodon. However, these comparisons can now whither and die with the release of Blue Record. Not only does Blue Record set Baroness apart from the territory of Mastodon that they were often criticized of treading, but they go off in their own personal artistic direction that has produced more than enough fruit for their labor. Blue Record begins with the slowly building instrumental intro "Bullhead's Psalm," which eases into the turmoil of the record with different guitars twanging their own chords under their own distortions in a hymnal style. The final track, "Bullhead's Lament," brings the music back down to Earth with an elongated and somber instrumental piece in the same vain as the intro that effectively concludes the album. The two serve as bookends that hold together Baroness' latest offering of beauty with aggression. Review by Phil Freeman Georgia-based psychedelic rock band (calling them a metal act seems very reductive, though there's some seriously headbangable material on this disc) Baroness has made a subtle but unmistakable evolutionary leap on this, their second full-length and a clear companion piece to 2007's Red Album. It's hard to say exactly what new guitarist Pete Adams has brought to the band after replacing drummer Allen Blickle's brother Brian, but the band's established blend of Southern sludge riffs, druggy instrumental journeys, and melodic interstitial interludes, all propelled by a particularly thudding drum sound and held together by John Baizley's hoarse but clean vocals and gorgeous cover art, are even stronger now than before. The transition from the almost Moody Blues-like "Steel That Sleeps the Eye" into the crunching hard rock epic "Swollen and Halo" is just one example of Baroness' seamless melding of moods through technique and compositional acumen. There are numerous interludes on the disc -- basically, any track shorter than four minutes is an exploration of a riff followed by a dissolve into sound effects or keyboard swooshes, slowly dissolving into the next actual song. "Ogeechee Hymnal," for example, offers one of the album's heaviest riffs, but it's a mere appetizer before "A Horse Called Golgotha," a suitably galloping prog-metal epic that effectively conquers Mastodon's territory, and includes some astonishing guitar leads. This is a ferocious album that's not afraid to be genuinely beautiful. One of the best hard rock releases of 2009. (There's also a two-disc deluxe edition that pairs the album with a live set recorded in 2008.) Track listing: 1. Bullhead's Psalm (Adams, John Dyer Baizley) - 01:19 2. The Sweetest Curse (Baroness ...) - 04:30 3. Jake Leg ( Baroness ...) - 04:23 4. Steel That Sleeps the Eye (Baroness ...) - 02:38 5. Swollen and Halo (Baroness ...) - 06:35 6. Ogeechee Hymnal (Baroness ...) - 02:35 7. A Horse Called Golgotha (Baroness ...) - 05:21 8. O'er Hell and Hide (Baroness ...) - 04:22 9. War, Wisdom and Rhyme (Baroness ...) - 04:25 10. Blackpowder Orchard (John Dyer Baizley) - 01:00 11. The Gnashing (Baroness ...) - 04:17 12. Bullhead's Lament (Baroness ...) - 02:59 Credits: Allen Blickle - Drums John Congleton - Producer, Engineer, Mixing Alan Douches - Mastering Hermann Hesse - Author Orion Landau - Design Summer Welch - Bass ℗ 2009 Relapse Records