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Red Album (2007) by Baroness was actually named Album of the Year by Revolver magazine in their November 2007 issue. Not only that, they’re touring with Opeth throughout this October. So why haven’t you heard of them? Beats me. But that’ll change soon… real soon.
Baroness is another one of those progressive, post-metal type bands that I can’t help but gravitate towards, and yet they’re very unique and completely different from any of my previous posts slapped into this sort of genre. It’s easy to compare them to bands like Opeth or Isis just because there is some screaming and heavy guitar work… but they are not the same. First of all, yeah Baroness’s vocalist screams, but it’s far more tame than Opeth or Isis. It sounds more like he’s just trying to sing loud enough for everyone to hear because he doesn’t have a mic for some reason. He’s also far more melodic than the screams you’d hear with Opeth which are just for the pure black death metal nonsense effect. His vocals are also pretty sparse, similar to the distribution on Isis’s Panopticon album. Now that I’ve gotten the vocals out the way and I’m not supposed to put so much emphasis on such things… let’s get to the stuff.
The big appeal to Baroness is the guitar work. Maybe I should put it this way, it’s for the guitar works? Baroness is one the few bands with frequent multiple lead guitar parts. Sometimes both guitars are doing the same thing to get a really thick sound, but often enough they’re actually playing just slightly different parts or even different all together. This isn’t a Lynyrd Skynyrd three guitar part kind of thing, or even a Onesidezero dual subtle melodic lead kind of thing either. It’s that Baroness listen to us rock out with two leads because our rhythm section is so f’in tight kind of thing.
Baroness is easily one of the most unique metal bands out there today. They’ve got a great balance of technical articulation and strong compositional skills. They aren’t flashy, but they aren’t wimpy either. I don’t have their earlier EP releases, but Red Album is a strong one all the way through and I can’t wait to see how they develop in the years to come. I think touring with Opeth will give them some very positive exposure that they deserve.
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