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...

Baroness: Yellow & Green

Baroness: Yellow & Green

2012

Relapse

Format I Own it on: Compact Disc

Track Listing: 

Disc One:  1: Yellow Theme  2. Take My Bones Away  3. March to the Sea  4. Little Things  5. Twinkler  6. Cocainium  7. Back Where I Belong  8. Sea Lungs  9. Eula 

Disc Two: 1. Green Theme  2. Board Up the House  3. Mtns. (The Crown & Anchor)  4. Foolsong  5. Collapse  6. Psalms Alive  7. Stretchmarker  8. The Line BetweenThe Line Between  9. If I Forget Thee, Lowcountry

Writing about this kind of reminds me of a few months back when I was writing about Herb Alpert...It's just not in a genre I listen to very often. It's a current Heavy Metal album, of which I own very few. Mainly because...well..I can't especially stand modern Heavy Metal.

You see, I actually do theoretically like Heavy Metal...it's just that there's only a small amount of modern heavy bands that I consider worthwhile. I'm a huge fan of Clutch, and Ghost. Hell, I'll even throw on some Mastodon every once in awhile, but the genre seems to have stagnated on forms that came into vogue around the 90's that drove me away from Metal in the first place. Namely Black/Death metal, which I find to be extremely dull, and the Alice in Chains-like drudging active-rock.  You see, Death Metal should be exciting, since it's usually played at fast tempos, but it feels slow to me...usually because the vocalists sing quarter-notes...Compare this to the spit-fire vocal delivery of many hardcore punk bands like the Bad Brains for example...it makes it sound a lot more lively...But I guess the goal of something called "Death Metal" isn't to be lively. Oh yea...there's also the matter of melody...which has almost been completely abandoned in the Metal World...For some reason there's this stubborn idea that something can't be melodic and heavy...Man, what bullshit...

Most modern Metal sounds like Wrestlers should be walking down an aisle to it...

So yea..I love heavy metal, but ever since the genre downplayed the more melodic aspects I've almost completely abandoned the form. But I'm always on the lookout for bands that might be able to breathe some new life into it for me...And I kept hearing the name Baroness thrown around  as an example of a melodic, heavy metal band that wasn't afraid to take risks...Apparently, they used to be much heavier, but with each color-coded album they released, they stretched themselves further and further. So after having this recommended to me so many times, I finally decided to check it out after I found a copy of this for a very low price...

My first impression walking away is "this is what metal fans find to be experimental?" It's not too far removed from something  like the Foo Fighters or Mastodon...It's mostly straight-forward Arena Rock with giant leather-lunged choruses...I haven't listened to the  radio in years, but it wouldn't surprise me at all to hear "Take My Bones Away," "The Line Between" or "Board Up the House" there...Actually, if "Board Up the House" and "The Line Between" both aren't on your local rock station right now, it's a huge injustice...They're of a much higher caliber than most other bands on there...Though I find the vocals a bit colorless, the instrumentation and the songwriting are definitely way above average...

And they actually do show a bit of range, which is encouraging, and makes the double-album running time a breeze...I love when they bust out the Moog-sounding keyboard on  "Sea Lungs." Now this feels different and exciting!

I'm encouraged by the fact that there's been a recent increase in listenable Heavy Metal...who knows...Maybe one day it'll be a genre I'll listen to regularly again...Now let's really get our shit together and work on some listenable new punk (that isn't by bands that have been around for a decade plus!)

Okay, so since we're discussing Heavy Metal today, let's use this as an excuse to look at some more pictures from a RIP magazine I scanned in...

 

Great White/Warrant bukkake...

 

I showed my friend Russ this picture and he said in a wacky voice, "Hyuk! We're eating funny food!" You gotta hear him say it...I tell you what...I'll record him saying it next time and I'll post an audio clip  for you....

 

Here's an ad for some bitchen L.A. metal clothes...

"Spectres of Yngwie." This is just the most pompous picture that it's possible to take..Maybe if he was playing video games against himself it might be cool...but chess?!

Sorry to put you guys through all that...Anyway, let's check out"Board Up the House" by Baroness...