Yellow & Green,
the third full-length album from southern sludgesters Baroness, has found
itself on a lot of “Most Anticipated Albums of the Year” lists, and for good
reason. Yellow & Green was announced as a double album, which meant
twice as much Baroness as expected, and the band’s first two records, Red and Blue were hailed as filling the void in sludgy heavy metal left by
Mastodon’s divergence into prog territory; also they were great albums that
showcased the band’s impressive skills.
And so the excitement has been building steadily for Yellow & Green for very nearly a
year, with fans excited to rejoice is what was sure to be another sludge
masterpiece. But then something weird
happened. People who had listened to the
album began using words like “poppy” and “radio-friendly” to describe it. The first song Baroness released from the
album, “Take My Bones Away,” featured harmonious vocals in place of the beastly
bellows of lead singer John Baizley, and the next two (“March to the Sea” and
“Eula”) followed suit. Was it a
joke? Was Baroness sacrificing their
place in metal’s royal lineage for the safety of radio rock? Were people
jumping to ridiculous conclusions after reading reviews and hearing only a
sixth of Yellow & Green’s music?
Get the answers to these questions after the jump…
The short answer to all three of these questions is an
emphatic “no.” Yellow & Green is certainly different than Barnoness’ previous
work, but not so much so that fans won’t enjoy it, or even love it. Yes, there are vocal harmonies and more
intricate guitar parts, but new bassist Matt Maggioni underlies it all with a
sludgy bass presence that keeps the albums rooted in the band’s past while
still allowing them to move forward.
Think of it as being more southern sludge rock with metal influences, as
opposed to sludge metal with southern rock influences. It’s a fairly large transition, but there’s no
need to worry about dropping the needle and hearing nothing more than a heavier
Kings of Leon record. Baroness still
bring the sludge, and Baizley’s roars are complemented incredibly by the added
harmonies.
The thing that stands out even more than that is how memorable
Yellow & Green is across the
board. After listening to it all week, I
have the main guitar riff from “March to the Sea,” the vocal melody from “Back
Where I Belong,” the bass/bass drum/snare rhythm section of “Cocanium,” and
countless other bits and pieces from the other songs on the album fighting each
other in my brain for the honor of being hummed. I think “catchy” is probably a better word
than “poppy” to describe the album, as the song constructions are possibly the
most intricate and varied of Baroness’ career.
Think back to the band’s Red,
specifically “Isak” and “Wailing Wintery Wind.”
Those songs sound completely different, and each is locked into the
sound of the song. Now the band is
allowing sounds and styles to bleed into each other, as evidenced by “Eula” moving
from an ethereal, breathy ballad into a full-on, balls out rocker over the
course of its seven minutes. Yellow & Green, much like Gojira’s L’Enfant Sauvage, is an album of
transition by an incredible band that isn’t content to rest on their laurels.
Yellow & Green isn’t
quite perfect; as our pal Jack illustrated so well about Gojira, Baroness doesn’t
quite nail the transition they’re aiming for.
There are some spots where the music almost gets too slow and loses the
intensity that permeates the rest of the record, and I really didn’t think the
two “theme” songs for each half added anything to the overall album. None of these issues, though, is as glaring
as the Split, which comes close to ruining Yellow
& Green. Though it’s very, very
good in its own right, the Green half of the album is almost completely
overshadowed by the Yellow, and the rumored split in the tone of the two colors
is unnecessary at best; all of Yellow
& Green is different Baroness, so why try to make “less different” and “more
different” halves? One of the dangers inherent
in double albums is that one half will be so much better than the other that
the lesser half feels like a bloated attempt at filling two albums instead of
making the best album possible regardless of length. Yellow
& Green doesn’t quite fall into category, but it does come close, as Yellow would undoubtedly be an instant
classic and my frontrunner for Best Album this year, while Green would be a really cool change for one of my favorite bands
that left me wanting more. As the sum, Yellow & Green falls somewhere in
the middle. It by far exceeds the
expectations I had for it after months of waiting, but by the end it fails to
live up to the expectations created by its first forty minutes.
- Durf
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