YELLOW & GREEN

All of Baroness' albums from "The Blue Album" back to the beginning (including the EPs) were top notch, inventive and amazing Prog Metal albums with a lot of emotion, and with as much instrumental music as vocal music. Yes it is very heavy music, but with a lot of progressive elements and very imaginative. The vocals were close to growling, but they still had a very melodic quality to them that made them all the more emotional in the same way that Devin Townsend's growling vocals are. I highly recommend any of those albums.

This album, called "Yellow & Green" is actually a double album, hence the title with two colors. Just one month after the release of this album, the members in the band were all injured in a bus accident, and it looked like this would be the demise of the band, but they all recovered from very serious injuries and started touring again. Not long after this however, two of the members left the band, but two other musicians soon joined the band and touring continued.

So, with this album, Baroness takes a turn towards a more accessible sound. You can't really say this is a progressive record, but it is a great heavy metal album nevertheless. I still enjoy the music on this album, there are still plenty of high points on the album, they just aren't progressive aspects anymore. The vocals are now cleaner, but unfortunately, they tend to lose the emotion they used to possess. The vocalist is still the same as on the past albums, he is just singing cleaner. The guitar work is absolutely awesome. You could pretty much say that the "Yellow" disc is more on the heavier side with a few mellower sections added in, and the "Green" disc has more softer and mellower tracks with a few heavy sections, especially towards the middle part. But, overall it has lost it's progressive heart, and that is a shame because this is an excellent band. In fact, I actually increased "The Red Album" to a 5 star album now after listening to it several times and gaining a better respect for it. Unfortunately, I can't be so generous to the "Yellow & Green" album simply because it is not progressive enough. Amazing harmonies, excellent guitar work, great instrumentation, but I miss the progressiveness of the older albums, the power and emotion. It is an excellent heavy metal album, but only a good but non-essential album in progressive terms.