Baroness: Gold & Grey (2019)

I have very complicated feelings about Baroness.  I really want to enjoy everything they do, because when there is a song I like from them, I often find myself obsessed with it for awhile.  But I just cannot get into their full albums for the most part.  That has not always been the case.  In the beginning when they were something of a Mastodon-esque sludge metal band I could easily get into them.  That describes Red Album and Blue Record.  The shift occurred with Yellow & Green, a massive double album that only had one song I truly enjoyed.  But "Take My Bones Away" is such a terrific song.  Then Purple dropped and I loved "Shock Me", but the album completely lost me in the second half.  And so it goes. 

I was somewhat reluctant to check this album out, because I had actually not heard anything prior to doing so.  But seeing as it was a Baroness album, I knew there would probably be at least a couple of songs that I really loved.  And that is definitely the case.  The album starts off very strong with the first couple of songs, highlighted by opener "Front Toward Enemy" which captures that rumbling, rollicking sound that is typically characteristic of the songs I most enjoy by the band.  The first half kind of peters out after awhile with songs that lean dangerously close to indie rock, but it does occasionally roar back, like on "Throw Me an Anchor", which starts off a little chaotically but morphs into another very strong track. 

The second half starts slowly with the crooning "Emmett - Radiating Light" before catching up with another rocker, "Cold-Blooded Angels".  After that the band loses a little bit of momentum by alternating songs with instrumentals that frequently do not really go anywhere.  This is kind of the experimental side of Baroness, which is perfectly fine, but it comes across as unnecessary filler most of the time.  And this is a long album because of it.  Cutting these would make a stronger album, because most of the last few songs are really damn good.

I do like this one a bit more than Purple.  It still does not rise to the level of Blue Record in my mind, but it is probably the most consistently good album since that one.  There is still quite a bit of filler and the album is longer than it should be, but it is a very strong Baroness album.  I guess I am not done checking out their new stuff yet.