Baroness - Blue Record (2009) [Relapse] // Grade: A

If I were to rate or discuss Baroness’ Blue Record as a conventional (or even unconventional) sludge/stoner/doom album, I’d have to say that it’s an epic failure. There’s nothing about it that remotely captures or furthers the wonderful genre of sludge metal that Baroness has been at the forefront of. But that’s the music snob in me talking, the one who gave Sunn O)))’s latest album an A+ and Harvey Milk’s Life… The Best Game in Town spot 3 on my best of 2008 list. Nonetheless, the kid in me who used to lip-sync to AC/DC and Guns N’ Roses in my bedroom is winning my internal conflict of ideology over the Blue Record and how I should rate it. So while my inner snob may not acknowledge this as a triumph of sludge metal, that kid in me knows killer Hard Rock when he hears it. It’s in my bones, and no amount of arty meandering (and pandering for that matter) can ever get rid of the sweet sensation truly epic rock sends up and down the spine.

This then begs the question of if we should punish Baroness as a sludge metal band for having the audacity to release a hard rock album? Maybe… if it were terrible. The past few years have given us an embarrassment of riches when it comes to phenomenal sludge/stoner/doom. Great hard rock? Not so much. And I don’t know about you, but I’m hungry, downright starving, for the sort of album that makes me want to run around my living room with a broom in my arms as I rock out for a packed house at Nassau Coliseum. That’s exactly the sort of album this is.

The Blue Record is the sort of mature, complex, rewarding album that could over time fit comfortably alongside the arena rock of the 70s and 80s, before hard rock got it’s bad name. Baroness had gone everywhere they could go with sludge on both of their fantastic EPs and Red Album, so why not roll the dice and try for bigger game, and a bigger audience? While I’m positive this will upset, if not offend, those who merely like their bands to repackage the same songs year after year with new album art, those with a broader appreciation and love for all that is Heavy & Hard will find a brave new (and familiar) world to explore. So strap in and get those lighters out…

All across Blue, Baroness follow the precedents long established by our beloved Monsters of Rock. There are bits of Zeppelin, Sabbath, Rainbow, Queensrÿche, Maiden and loads of Black Album (awful thrash, yet great Hard Rock) era Metallica, all the way through to modern Stoners turned hard rockers, Queens of the Stone Age. Baroness weaves in and out of a veritable who’s who of black light heroes in constructing something familiar, accessible and yet entirely innovative by the sheer fact that Baroness’ own sludgy growl while contained, simply can’t be denied from rearing their monolithic head over every aspect of this album.

Mastodon, Kylesa and now Baroness have made it clear that this year there is something profound bubbling in the Georgian waters. Blue cements the fact that it isn’t merely the sludge on it’s swampy surface.

- My Pal the Crook