GOLD & GREY

Baroness' "Gold and Grey" is apparently the last of the chromatic-color themed albums, and is the 5th in that series. Released in June of 2019, it has a hefty number of tracks, 17 to be exact. The line up on this album consists of founder John Baizley (guitar, lead vocals, keyboards, and percussion), Nick Jost (bass, keyboards, backing vocals), Sebastian Thomson (drums and percussion, and Gina Gleason (guitar, backing vocals). The only new addition to the band is Gleason who replaced Pete Adams, the rest of the band is the same as on "Purple", their previous album.

Seventeen tracks may seem like a lot, but keep in mind that only one track exceeds the 6 minute mark, and there are a handful of tracks that are quite short. The album starts out with the excellent "Front Towards Enemy" with some heavy sounds and lots of guitar work that will get your heart racing. However, Baroness fans will notice that the music is still more accessible than the first 2 albums, at least in the beginging. That's the bad news, but the good news is, the music has some rough, unrefined edges, so it doesn't seem so smooth and ironed out as the last two albums. Also, as the album continues, the music gets more unique and experiemental, so keep with it and it will get better. I do miss the days, strangely enough, when John's vocals were more of a melodic growl, I used to love the passion behind those vocals. There is also much less instrumental interplay like there was on the first two albums, and that is really missed. However, there are still times when a surprising amount of passion does show through

Yet, there are still some great tracks here. The aforementioned "Front Towards Enemy" utilizes the bands newer sound quite well. Also, on some of the shorter tracks like "Seasons", you hear the band experimenting with keyboards and guitar, which makes for some nice variety that you don't expect. Also, "Tourniquet" has a lot of heartfelt passion on it, starting off surprisingly soft, but yet unique and a bit off kilter. As the track continues, it builds in intensity, but not in the ways you would expect. This is definitely a direction that is new for the band, and it has a unique progressive feel to it. Excellent track. This is a great example of why the band is considered Post Metal and Experimental. This experimental attitude shows through in "Anchor's Lament" with some deep harmonies, piano, string effects and such. The song acts as a prelude to "Throw Me an Anchor", which has a more thickly layered feel to it, heavy like some of the previous work, but the layers contain not just guitars, but a miasma of other sounds that build a nice and tense feeling to the track. The there is the surprise of "I'd Do Anything" which sounds like a ballad, but there is a lot of feedback and interesting effects that go far beyond the typical.

When you think you have heard it all, along comes "Emmett-Radiating Light". Talk about unconventional. This features softly plucked guitars and a really odd harmony in the vocals. A tenseness is felt in a swelling drone in the background and the echoing aspects of the synths and the brightness of bells against the morose vocals, you would almost swear you were listening to "Ulver's" album "Blood Inside". Also, the contrasting of John's and Gina's vocals on "Cold-Blooded Angels" is something else unexpected, especially when the music develops into something that resembles the passion from the earlier albums. There is even a short foray into micro-tones with "Crooked Mile", but I'm not sure if that was intentional or if they were just warping the sound. "Borderlines" is another highlight of the album, heavy, yet this is the band acquiring it's own sound and style, a bit unstable and teetering on the edge of insanity. I love it!

It is good to hear that Baroness has moved away from the more commercial sound that was on "Yellow & Green" and this album finds them experimenting a lot more. While it still isn't as excellent as "The Red Album", is still has a lot of strength in the band's willingness to explore new avenues. Once again, I have some hope for this band and I can detect the ability for them to continue to strengthen their sound. There is a possibility that they can have another 5 star album, but I can also tell that when it does happen, it will be completely different from "The Red Album" and will be it's own glorious work. As far as this album, it is a step back into the right direction, even though it might be a completely different path than it started out to be for the band. There is, however, some weaknesses in the album, as if there is a lack of confidence in the music (as in "Broken Halo") or if they are just getting familiar with what their new boundaries are. It's not perfect, but it is an indication of great things to come. There is a bit of unevenness on the album, and it probably would have flowed a lot smoother if the intermediate tracks could have somehow tied into the main tracks better, but these are things that many listeners might not notice. Overall, this album makes me happy to hear this talented band expand its horizons again. I can say that I am looking forward to seeing where they go next again, because for a while there, I was starting to lose interest. This album brings it all back again. Though it's not the best of the year, it is probably the most excited I have been hearing from band that I had lost hope in. Welcome back, Baroness! Yes I miss the old Baroness, but I love the new Baroness.

Baroness are one of the biggest acts in all of progressive metal. Their first two albums (Red Album and Blue Record) are beloved by the prog metal community for their creative fusions of sludge metal, progressive rock, and some surprising pop sensibilities. Their sprawling third album, Yellow & Green, was a noticeable step down in quality, featuring a lot of music that sounded like attempts to make radio-friendly hard rock. There was still good music here, but it should've been cut down to one album. Purple, released in 2015, was a step up. It was a metal album, for sure (and a pretty good one, at that), but it still wasn't on par with those first two albums.

So, with Baroness's recent ups-and-downs in mind, I approached this album somewhat cautiously. The singles were okay on the whole. Some were certainly better than others, but this is a long record, so I tried to keep an open mind.

The music itself is varied in its quality. The addition of guitarist/backup vocalist Gina Gleason works very well. Her backing vocals add a rich, new character to the music, and she and lead vocalist John Baizley sound great together.

"Seasons" is an engaging composition featuring some of Baroness's most ambitious writing yet, and "Tourniquet" has a strong melody and big chorus that carry it. "Cold-Blooded Angels" is one of the more ambitious songs on the album. It starts off fairly quiet, and there are some neat synthesizers thrown in around the two-minute mark. Baroness's experiments with keyboards have been few and far between, but I've liked them; I've long wished they'd do a fuller integration.

"Can Oscura" is my favorite song on the album. It's a wonky two-minute instrumental based around a weird, repetitious rhythm that has a strong krautrock inflection, albeit more metallic. It's topped with strange, warbling synths that work perfectly. "Borderlines" is also one of the stronger cuts, and the last minute has some neat instrumental experimentation. "Pale Sun" is an effective closer; it's one of the quieter songs on the album and ends Gold & Grey on a creepy, haunting note.

However, upon first listening to Gold & Grey, what immediately stood out is that this record sounds absolutely terrible. I'm not addressing the compositions?I'm talking about the mastering of this album. The actual sound of this album is complete and total [&*!#]. It is distractingly bad. The music clips terribly, and everything sounds compressed and washed-out. The guitars have a staticky buzz to them, and the drums come off as mushy in the moments where they're supposed to be most intense. I don't know what in the world they were thinking, but this is some of the worst sound production I have ever heard, especially on such a major release.

Despite there being quite a few decent-to-good songs on this album, there are also quite a few unimpressive and unnecessary ones. "Front Toward Enemy"  and "Broken Halo" both sound like generic, radio-friendly hard rock, full of bland riffs and unimaginative melodies. "Throw Me an Anchor" is so terribly mastered, I can barely make anything out other than the bass line. Everything else is too dry and buzzy to discern. The chorus is big and schlocky and ultimately fails to land.

"I'd Do Anything" and "Emmet: Radiating Light" are acoustic pieces. The former attempts to be gentle and intimate, while the latter aims to be creepy and foreboding. Both fall flat: the music is tedious, and the lyrics are trite.

This album is also full of interludes that add nothing. As an hour-long album, I can understand tossing in a couple rests to break things up and give the listener a breather. However, of the 17 songs on this album, five or six are interludes (depending on how you want to categorize "Can Oscura").  "Sevens" is a neat bit of synthy experimentation, but the others range from unnecessary to bad.

Gold & Grey is a bit of a split decision from me, purely focusing on the music. It has a lot of Yellow & Green-style balladry, sprawl, and radio rock; but it also contains Baroness's weirdest and most out-there music yet. I (overall) loved their integration of synthesizers, and their occasional integration of krautrock influences worked better than I would have imagined. I'd love to hear a consistently-krautrock-influenced sludge metal album. However, the mastering is so terrible that it detracts a lot from my enjoyment of this album. At moments, it was bad enough to remind me the worst hyper-kvlt, recorded-in-a-basement black metal I've ever heard.

Much like after Yellow & Green, I'm not sure what to expect from Baroness in the future. They seem unsure of where to go themselves, as evinced by the vacillations in songwriting style and quality. I could easily see them going either the pop-hard-rock direction or down the more experimental route. I just hope that they have better mastering on their next release. The audio quality probably knocked a lot off my final score.

Review originally posted here: theeliteextremophile.com/2019/06/30/album-review-baroness-gold-grey/