BARONESS — Blue Record (review)

BARONESS — Blue Record album cover Album · 2009 · Sludge Metal Buy this album from MMA partners
2.5/5 ·
topofsm
Baroness released their Blue Record in 2009 to much critical acclaim. Though they spent their previous work including their debut album and their EPs wandering around in the growing scene of mainstream sludge metal, causing them to be often labeled as an inferior form of Mastodon. In this album they seem to evade that categorization a bit more, though they still need may need additional experience to be taken seriously as a band capable of creating masterwork.

That's not to say that the band has poor musicianship or compositional abilities. It's just that there's very little in the way of impressive musical ideas, technical or otherwise. The guitar is pretty standard for metal, the drums are simple enough that they could fit into a standard rock album, and the vocals aren't anything special.

The album's only strength seems to be the songwriting style, which is somewhat complex, using a variety of riffs in each song as opposed to repetition and standard song structure. That being said, the riffs themselves are still fairly standard and the rhythms are basic. There's still a bit of atmosphere that adds to the progressive nature of Blue Record, though not enough to accurately call it an atmospheric metal work.

Standout tracks would be "A Horse Called Golgotha" which is a fast paced song with driving tempo and moving drums, with probably the catchiest chorus. The 'filler' type tracks are nice as well, but hardly necessary on the album, a couple could easily be taken out. "The Gnashing" is also fairly good, starting out as a lazy bluesy guitar strum, eventually building into a solid rocker. However, for the most part, the songs on Blue Record are pretty unmemorable.

All in all, a better effort could have been put into this work. As leaders in the current sludge scene one would suspect that they have more up their sleeve than this.
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