Album Review: "Gold & Grey" by Baroness

BARONESS
*Gold & Grey*
(Abraxan Hymns)

Baroness's glorious new double album wastes no time announcing what it is all about: perseverance. Singer/guitarist/songwriter/artist John Baizley declares in the opener "Front Toward Enemy"--a hard-charging, bass-driven rocker--"we're headed for disaster...we can only fight front toward enemy." It's a frantic start to what turns out to be one of the most heart-felt hard rock albums of its time: this is about survival, hope and desperate measures, a theme that makes sense in the band's timeline after a near-death and life-changing bus accident in 2012.
The second album since that accident, 17 songs in length, establishes Baroness (Baizley as the only original member) as survivors. Baizley wails on the ever morphing rocker "Seasons," "we fall, we rise, we bend, we break, we burn, but we survive" before breaking into thrash riffage along with new guitarist Gina Gleason, Baizley's nimble foil whose interplay meshes perfectly with the band's uptempo and emotive instrumental aesthetic. 
Short, free-form instrumental explorations bridge the gaps between sprawling compositions, a highlight being "Tourniquet": "Somebody throw me a tourniquet, I'm openhearted." Once again, a thudding bassline provides the backbone to Baizley's wear-it-on-his-sleeve, full-throated singing. "Throw Me An Anchor" ups the hard-rock tempo and furthers the theme: "This is an emergency." The mid-tempo tracks on the album showcase the band's subtlety best: On the sprawling "Borderlines," the band's tightness is on display--evidenced by the dueling guitar solos and Baizley's plaintive realization: "Borderline, get me out alive...When it rains, I am right where I belong."
9/10
Appearing July 23, 2019, at Durty Nellie's in Palatine, IL
Link to print version of review in July 2019 issue of Illinois Entertainer magazine. Navigate PDF file to page 28.

Album Review: Pelican's "Nighttime Stories"

PELICAN
*Nighttime Stories*
(Southern Lord)

There might not be a more thrilling trio of instrumental hard rock songs than three found on Pelican's new full-length album, the first since 2013. About three minutes into "Midnight and Mescaline" through the end of the song, the post-metal pace slackens and allows the band to explore stunted power-chord riffing amid a groovy, repetitious beat. It's that rough, groovy texture that Pelican has honed like no other band over a near two-decade career. The mesmerizing end to that track quickly transitions into the bouncy pop rhythm of "Abyssal Plain," which soon transitions into grindcore and then to wide-open mid-tempo jamming of layered guitars and headbanging time changes--and back to grindcore again. "Cold Hope" finishes the trifecta--a bottom-heavy and relentless burner with even bigger grooves and riffage than the previous two. It closes out the trio with air-raid siren guitar solos. The six other tracks help cement this offering as the band's best, most complete album: the title track ups the ante on the dirty-sounding, distorted riffage, and "Full Moon, Black Water" shows the band's widest range of hard rock styles over its eight minutes in length. At the four-minute mark of this track the band once again breaks it down into the muted and frantic riffing for which it is best known, only to end with a shoe-gazing passage that evokes the pleasurable feeling of awakening after a long night of dreaming.
9/10
Link to the print version of this review in the July 2019 issue of Illinois Entertainer. Navigate PDF file to page 28.