Blue Record

Blue Record, the second LP from Savannah, Ga., hero-metal quartet Baroness, feels like it spins for either 30 or 90 minutes, but never the 44 minutes the tracklist advertises. Full of stops and starts, dynamic swells and swan dives, razor-sharp guitar leads, and dense full-band bludgeons, these 12 tracks swell with parts and counterparts, condensing epics into tightly arranged, executed, and edited two-minute stretches. Within most any given track, Barone ss twist between feelings of triumph and trouble, elation and depletion, playing all with unequal parts grace and grit. When those extremes and the sonic care that goes into creating them win over, the Blue Record feels like a marathon where everyone wins. That description, however, runs the risk of making Baroness' triumphant follow-up to 2007's Red Album seem like a laborious listen. It's not: Via expert pacing and meticulous sequencing, those peaks and valleys arise precisely where they should, creating an experience that feels more like a sunny ride in a sports car than anything resembling hard work.

Unlike many young bands that need time to find their identity, Baroness arrived five years ago with a fully-formed sound that immediately separated them from the rest of the American metal pack, the early First and Second EPs and the 2007 split with Unpersons, A Grey Sigh in a Flower Husk, subtly morphing from monstrous, sludgy post-metal to the broad, all-encompassing style of 2007’s acclaimed Red Album. Theirs is a sound that’s difficult to pin down, with traces of mainstream American metal, early 1970s progressive rock, Southern rock, the dissonance of Fugazi, the classic gallop and twin guitar work of Thin Lizzy, and the stripped-down, straightforward approach of a jam-oriented indie rock band, pure heaviness offset by an often startling knack for arresting melodies, either from guitar or John Baizley’s robust vocals. For those who are wary of the seeming impenetrability of more extreme-minded contemporary metal, the Red Album was far more welcoming, its openness to sounds outside the genre and ability to integrate everything seamlessly lending itself an inclusive rather than exclusive quality.