Baroness: Purple

Baroness: Purple

2015

Abraxan Hymns Records


Format I Own it on: Compact Disc

Track Listing: 1. Morningstar  2. Shock Me  3. Try to Disappear  4. Kerosene   5. Fugue  6. Chlorine & Wine  7. The Iron Bell  8. Desperation Burns  9. If I Have to Wake Up (Would You Stop the Rain?)  10. Crossroads of Infinity



Oh, man...This is soooo stupid, but it's absolutely true...On Friday night I did the usual hanging out, getting blasted and listening to records...I finally crashed out at about 2 am, but at around 5:30 AM I began to severely toss and turn...I can't explain the feeling, but I'll try...Imagine trying to sleep while a drop of water repeatedly crashes against your forehead at regular intervals...Something was slowly pounding at my hippocampus...Finally, it was too much to take and something compelled me to wake up, filled with dread and horror! "NOOOOO!!!!!," I screamed

And what had haunted me so? What had dragged me kicking and screaming from my drunken hibernation?

None other than the fucking virulent "Puppy Monkey Baby"...

I know it's so cliche to hate on this thing and pussily describe the ad as "nightmare fuel" but this time it was actually true...It wasn't really a nightmare though, but a nagging sensation... A part of my brain couldn't turn it off the chant...Not even in my sleep...Bizarre...

Alright...Enough with the monkey baby thing...Y'know what I like to do? Irritate the fuck out of myself with listicles...Especially music-based ones...I love reading other people's rankings and getting pissed off with their inexplicable tastes...

But the one that really got me lately was this: http://www.rollingstone.com/music/lists/20-best-metal-albums-of-2015-20151210

Rolling Stone's list of the 20 Best Heavy Metal Albums of 2015. Now, Rolling Stone's tastes have been extremely questionable for a looooong time now...(Any boyband or auto-tuned pop star automatically gets a top rating...As do a handful of grandfathered "important" rock stars  who still put out new albums (who have put out their best album since (insert name of historic album) that you'll only end up listening to once) (Springsteen, U2, Paul McCartney fall into this category) and any other good, working band who actually plays an instrument and has put out more than one album (remember the magic debut syndrome...A band can come out of nowhere with a good album but nowadays for some reason if you're unfortunate enough to put out a second album then you're automatically get points for existing past your debut) gets three stars at best and are treading water...Famous blinged out rappers automatically get 4-5 stars, a lesser know rapper who puts out the exact same shit gets 2...)

(SISQO! BEANIE SIGEL! JOHN LENNON!!

"N Sync are paving a new high road for teen pop's future. Who else will join them?")

 So, I was a little intrigued by their metal rankings, since I haven't been able to crack their code on the genre...They usually sorta look down on heavy metal in the general reviews section, but can still come up with 20 good albums at the end of the year...Anyway, I should have been discouraged by the Marilyn Manson graphic at the top of the page...I figured it was a fluke and Manson was a sort of generic comedic shorthand for "heavy metal"or something...

Now the list was pretty solid...Albums I love for sure...Ghost, Clutch, Slayer...All good records this year...Then I get to the bottom and who put out the best heavy metal album this year? None other than MARILYN MANSON! And there was a write up talking about how much he's changed and what a breakthrough this album was, etc, etc...So I was like, "I haven't heard it...I'll give it a chance...I'll support artistic growth...etc. etc." So I listened to it on youtube and...

IT WAS LITERALLY THE SAME OLD SHIT!!! It seriously gave me '93 flashbacks...Oh, well...

The point is...I guess music is in the ear of the beholder...

 And the beholder doesn't have ears, so let bad taste reign...

Wait, wait! My other point is Baroness' fantastic new album "Purple" is number 7 on this list...6 whole notches below Marilyn Mason...Now ain't that some shit!

In the very early days of the Friday Night Record Party blog, I kinda gave a middling review of Baroness' then-new "Yellow & Green" album...I recently re-read my post and its weird how much my musical tastes have changed...I was moaning about the current state of heavy metal, but nowadays it's probably the only genre of new music that I actually get excited about...There's tons of amazing new metal shit coming out now...At the time metal seemed to be emerging from decades of nu-metal/death metal/groove metal/black metal/active rock shit that drove me from the genre for a great many years...Bu I'm so happy to have metal back (still waiting on punk to become listenable again)...

Baroness was one of the band's that signaled the return of metal for me...Still, I found "Yellow and Green" to be only partially successful...There was some astounding shit on there ("Board Up the House," "Take My Bones Away") and stuff on there I could still care less about ("Twinkler", various  "Themes") and was a little too Mastodon-biting...

But this "Purple"was exactly what I was looking for...To me, they totally beat the radio-ready era of Mastodon at their own game...This is some mighty shit that manages to stay accessible...All the dank balladeering and fucking around is stripped away (or better yet, the dank balladeering and experimentation is absorbed into the perfectly-balanced songs) and they bust out one of the strongest, most melodic, inventively played albums in modern metal...One of those albums where every-single-song-rules...

In the "Why oh why is this stuff not on the radio" category we have "Shock Me" and " Kerosene" which all feature such huge melodies and great harmonies that I can't imagine they wouldn't knock out any fan of heavy music...Perhaps its the delicate guitar interplay or the inherent sense of subtlety (even among the grand singalongs) that work against the radio format...Oh, well...The world's loss I guess...

 (I don't have this pretty purple vinyl shown above...My copy is on a lowly compact disc...Yes, I'm aware there's  a big chunk of Beatles related text across the picture...I can't figure out how to get rid of it...Maybe if we ignore it, it'll go away...)

Pretty much every review of this album that anybody's ever done makes reference to the band's near-fatal tour bus accident that resulted in a long period of physical rehabilitation (explaining the long period between the release of the "Yellow and Green" and the "Purple" albums) but you really can't help it. I think it is an unavoidable subject when discussing the bruised majesty of "Purple"...It has such a dazed, adrenalized, edge-of-consciousness feeling to it...The rush of pure survival...I think this is best exemplified in "Chlorine & Wine" which goes from woozy to world-toppling in six and a half minutes...It would probably get my vote as 2015's best metal song if Ghost's damn "Cerice" wasn't such an instant classic...

Greatness at every turn...I can't recommend this higher...So much better than anything Marilyn Manson is capable of...This is gonna be a hard one to top...

Here's "Chlorine & Wine" by Baroness...Enjoy...