Baroness – Gold and Grey
June 14th, 2019
Progressive Sludge Metal / Progressive Rock
Abraxan Hymns
Savannah, Georgia, USA
So we’ve come to the final entry in Discography Deep Dive as it relates to the work of Savannah sludge legends Baroness, ending with their fifth full length record, Gold and Grey, the second of the band’s releases that is a double album. After digging through the first four releases in the band’s catalog and determining that, at least according to my own tastes, Blue Record and Purple are the easy standouts, that doesn’t necessarily bode well for Gold and Grey. I found Yellow and Green, the band’s first foray into double album territory, to be bloated and a bit too long for my liking. Purple to me felt like a return to form and was a much more digestible and concise record. Yet, here we are again with another double effort, and so how does it fare?
Clocking in at just thirty seconds over an hour in length, Gold and Grey isn’t as daunting of a record to digest as Yellow and Gold was, but to me it still feels a bit bloated. There are 17 tracks on this thing, and many of them are short interludes that feel like they could’ve easily been folded into one of the existing songs or perhaps even completely excised from the track list. Cuts like “Blankets of Ash”, “Anchor’s Lament” and “Crooked Mile” don’t feel like they justify themselves as separate tracks in comparison to the meatier main cuts like “Seasons” or “Throw Me an Anchor”, and I wish the band had just chosen to make a shorter, more concise record than overextend themselves on yet another double album.
That said I actually found myself enjoying some of the songs on here more than Yellow and Green, which at the end of the day matters a lot more to me than the flow of a record or how long it is. “Seasons” is up there as one of my favourite Baroness tracks, from the amount of different movements it goes through to the chaotic blast beat explosion that marks the first time Baroness has ever used such a drum technique in their music, to the loud and catchy chorus that begs to be sung along to. There’s a reason the band chose this as the lead single for the album: it rules.
Yet there are other cuts on this album that don’t really do it for me. The song “Tourniquet”, for example, while obviously very emotive, feels a bit too sappy for me, especially with its acoustic intro. I like some of the riffs that come in and out throughout the track but as a whole it just doesn’t do much for me. Ultimately a big problem I have with this record is that it just feels too bogged down in the desire to be grandiose and what I can only describe as being beautifully melancholy. It’s very saccharine but the amount of honey that this album is dipped in makes things a little too sweet, even for me sometimes. It’s not every song, but it’s a solid chunk of the record. Still, I’d be lying if I said the song “I’d Do Anything” doesn’t get to me sometimes.
This album sees the band solidify the lineup that they currently have as of the release of Stone. This is who you’re seeing if you catch Baroness live. It’s notable for being the first record released since guitarist and backing vocalist Gina Gleason joined the band, backing up John Baizley and Nick Jost as well as Sebastian Thomas on the drums. Gleason is obviously a very talented and skilled guitar player, and some of the riffs on here absolutely rip because of it. The introductory riff to “Throw Me an Anchor”, for example, shreds like crazy.
Overall I think what really digs deep into my soul about this album is that it’s less riff-oriented and more focused around crafting intricate and interesting sonic textures by layering a lot of different instruments and effects over one another. This evidence by just how many interlude tracks there are as well as how many songs on here are not guitar-focused or even lack guitar entirely like “Emmett – Radiating Light”. It doesn’t make the album bad by any stretch, and I’ve tried to judge it based on its own merits, but when its compared to the back catalog of the band which is much more riff-oriented its difficult to reconcile the sonic direction they’ve gone in with the reason I got into them in the first place. Still, I enjoy this record enough, and while I may consider it one of their weakest offerings, it still has enough songs on it that I like that I end up coming back to it from time to time still.
Final Verdict: 7/10
Good
Favourite Tracks:
“Front Toward Enemy”
“Seasons”
“Throw Me an Anchor”
“I’d Do Anything”
“Broken Halo”
“Borderlines”
~ Akhenaten
Where Strides The Behemoth? 