Andy's Game - Andy's Game (2020)

Country: Greece
Style: Hard Rock
Rating: 6/10
Release Date: 9 Jan 2020
Sites: Facebook | Twitter | YouTube

I know very little about Andy's Game, but I like much of what I hear on this album. The Andy of the name is Andreas Chatzimanolis, who goes by Hatchma, a name he also gave to his studio. I can't find a website but it looks like he teaches guitar and composes for others on a freelance basis. It might not be too surprising that it took six years for him to finish this album, as I bet it was done in spare moments as time and money allowed.

While the name suggests a band, it's almost entirely a solo effort. He wrote everything; sang and played most of the instruments himself (with one guest, Thomas Andreou on drums); and produced and engineered the album too. I would think that's why we can actually hear all those instruments. It's easy for a mixer to hide the bass player but when the guy playing the bass is doing the mixing, it's audible.

Andy didn't grab me immediately. The weakest aspect is surely his vocals and the opening track, The Battle of Navarino, starts out as a vocal track. Only as it runs on does the solid riff really settle into our bones, the bass add a solemn note to proceedings and the guitar get really interesting, firstly with a surprising folky section, then with some fancy stuff and finally with a solid solo. I wasn't on board at the beginning of the track but I was when it ended.

For all those little fancy guitar moments, this isn't a show-off album. The best thing about it may be that this guitar teacher isn't just hitting every note on the instrument like he's the next greatest shredder celebrity, he's happy to showcase just what a guitar can do. He builds these songs from the ground up with riffs then adds in whatever else will work for the material. I admire his restraint as much as his talent.

I also admire his variety, though some of that may be due in part to the six year recording process. It's within the bounds of possibility that he saw a debut solo album as a great opportunity to perform a collection of songs in the styles of his idols. Never Say Die sounds like Deep Purple from its very first note and Silver Lights kicks off like a radio friendly Van Halen song, even if it becomes more of an upbeat Demon number. As they run on, they all become Andy's Game songs, though, as his voice doesn't follow the emulation.

Only one is an actual cover version, Ditch Queen being the Frank Marino song from his Juggernaut solo album in 1982, and I think it's a better, livelier and sleazier version than John Norum's. It's a real showcase for his bluesy guitar talent too. Other songs do feel familiar though, even if I'm unable to place them. Digital Wormhole isn't a cover, but it burrowed into my brain and made me think that I'd heard it before. It's a real grower of a track, starting out feeling a little empty but evolving into what might be my favourite song on the album.

It's as hard to place in time as anything here, though Hard Night is surely the epitome of that. Like many of these songs, it feels like something from the early eighties, when the NWOBHM was transitioning into something not so revolutionary. The vocals feel like they're from a working class punk who's evolving his sound into metal. And there's a solid seventies rock riff that feels highly reminiscent of Jimmy Page.

I believe Andy is Greek and his studio is somewhere in Greece, most of this is in English and he's entirely fluent. One song, however, the quirkier and more playful E.C.P. Ye, is in Greek so I have no idea what it's about. It's yet another different sound for the album, with keyboards that lend a world flavour to proceedings.

I'd love to read an interview with Andy Chatzimanolis to discover the roots of this album and why it sounds the way it does. Until I find one, I'll just sit back and listen to the whole thing again. It's at once so consistent and yet so varied in style. I like it. I even got used to his voice by the third or fourth time through!

The Drowning - The Radiant Dark (2019)

Country: UK
Style: Doom/Death Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 8 Nov 2019
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Metal Archives

I've mentioned a few times that I was around when doom/death was created. I lived in Halifax, home to bands like Paradise Lost and My Dying Bride, and I bought their work from the very beginning. I remember seeing the former live in Bradford before they had an album out, being surprised when a kid a year ahead of me at school who wore a Kiss T-shirt on non-uniform days got up on stage to drum for them.

However, while I kept up with those particular bands, my drift away from the music of the alternative nineties made me miss new bands like The Drowning, a Welsh doom/death outfit founded in 2003 whose fifth album was selected by two Angry Metal Guy reviewers as the best album of 2019 and one as maybe the best doom/death album of the decade. That's strong praise indeed. Of course I needed to check it out!

And, while I wouldn't praise it as highly as them (I rated three doom/death albums higher in 2019, though one was from the previous year: Phlebotomized, Eternal Candle and The Dead Sea), it's pretty damn good. I think my biggest problem with it was the mix, which feels off and sometimes empty. The guitars often let the music soar but the vocals of Matt Small keep it anchored to the earth. They're too prominent in the mix and the end result suffers for that. Also, Steve Hart's drums are a little too prominent as well and it often sounds like he's banging on a set of plastic tubs.

As such, The Drowning sometimes sound less like a doom/death band and more like a death metal band who play slower than usual. I should add here that slower doesn't always mean slow. Prometheus Blinded isn't particularly slow at all and the majestic guitars that open the next track, In Cold Earth, do a fantastic job of highlighting just how far the band had drifted away from doom/death. It's just a death metal song.

In Cold Earth, on the other hand, has a solid, aching weight to it and it's driven, like so much of this album, by the guitars of Mike Hitchen and Jason Hodges. They aim at a My Dying Bride feel more than a Paradise Lost one and they nail it. There are many points where I wish I could let the vocals fade away and, on this track, the drums too, which feel a little intrusive and overdone, so I can just listen to those guitars soar above the universe.

All my favourite moments here tie to those guitars. They're fine just doing business as usual, but there are moments when they shine even brighter and I found myself grinning. There's a great riff when The Triumph of the Wolf in Death moves into a quieter section and a fantastic doomy riff midway through In Cold Earth. The slowdown moments in All We Need of Hell are glorious (oh, hey, there's a bass in here too, courtesy of Richard Moore, who also suffers from the mix) and I'm talking the ones within the song as well as the grand slowdown that is it's end.

All this is to say that I enjoyed this but it didn't blow me away the way it blew away those Angry Metal Guy reviewers. That is, until we get to the last couple of tracks.

I Carve the Heart from the Universe is the longest track on the album, at a nudge over ten minutes, but it's a real gem, with the guitars doing joyous things, the drums delightfully restrained for a change and Small's vocals as versatile on this one song as they've been for the entire rest of the album. If it's exactly I wanted from this band, then Blood Marks My Grave is what I dreamed they might become. It's majestic from its first moment and it keeps on getting better.

These are how the definition of how to end an album. If the whole thing had been like these two tracks, I'd be raving about how magnificent it was too! For now, even discounting the production issues, I don't think it's anywhere near as consistent as it could be and only moments of genius here and there live up to the way the album ends. I'm happy to have finally found the band and I have four prior albums to devour. All hail British doom/death!

Motorbooze - Motorbooze (2020)

Country: Argentina
Style: Southern Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 1 Jan 2020
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | YouTube

Any rock/metal band name that starts with Motor, with or without an umlaut, is automatically going to stir up expectations of being a Motörhead tribute band but that doesn't help Motorbooze, who aren't remotely that. Sure, they clearly like Motörhead and there's a little Motörhead in their sound, but I wouldn't even call it their primary influence. Juan Della Ceca doesn't drum remotely like Philthy or Mikkey and Scorpion Shaw doesn't try to sound like Lemmy at all.

What they sound like is a southern rock band, which is rather appropriate as they hail from Buenos Aires in Argentina, which is rather further south than most southern rock bands! They have a heavy edge, so they're flirting with a southern metal tag constantly but I'd place them more on the rock side of an ever hard to define boundary between rock and metal, even though there's not much Allman Brothers or Lynyrd Skynyrd here. Think heavier than Black Stone Cherry but not so far down that scale to reach the likes of Exhorder.

While this, their debut album, starts out well enough, I actually think that it gets better as it goes along. Blood kicks things off nicely and it finds a nice groove, but it tries far too hard and there's so much staccato guitar that it lost me a few times. Obliterator plays in a similar vein but it kept me throughout because it stayed in the groove that it found. That it's also an aching groove helps too. It could easily be faster but it doesn't need to be and I appreciate the band fighting the urge.

As the album runs on, I found that those grooves get more engaging. From the relatively simple one midway through Roussian Roulette to the delightful and much deeper groove that pervades Blackmoon Shadows, the band comes across as particularly comfortable on these later songs, as if they were attempting to deliberately push the envelope on earlier, more overt songs and just settled down to what felt most comfortable to them later.

The boundary may be Motherfucking Song, which kind of does both. I love the more restrained solo midway through but I also love how punchy the song gets behind it. All the guitars, whether bass, lead or rhythm, are provided by a man named Sebastián Taux and he does a lot on this song, once the Al Pacino sample that opens it up gives way to the music.

As much as I enjoyed the work of his cohorts in Motorbooze too, I think Taux is what I'll take away most from this album. Shaw steals the limelight from the outset but Taux slowly but surely steals it away from him with a steady succession of solid riffs and elegant solos. I say slowly but surely because he doesn't really do anything flash at any point, so it takes a little while to realise just how good he is. By the time we get to the end of Mindset of Destruction, we realise it even as we acknowledge that it seems effortless for him. The final blitzkrieg is just a bonus.

I should also highlight Chaos Maker, which closes out the album. Everything here runs pretty consistently around four minutes, with Blackmoon Shadows a minute longer than anything else. Then there's Chaos Maker, which is a nine minute epic to wrap things up. And it does feel epic, as if the band took a look at all the things they did on this album and made extra sure to do them all double on this one last track. Somehow, it isn't overdone and the band sound all the better for being let loose like this. I liked it a great deal.

While the name is likely to continue to be misleading and I have no idea at all what the cover art is supposed to be telling us, this is a strong debut for Motorbooze and a solid recommendation for any who prefer their southern rock with a bit of crunch.

White Ward - Love Exchange Failure (2019)

Country: Ukraine
Style: Post-Black Metal
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 20 Sep 2019
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives | VK | YouTube

I'm always interested in seeing how far genres can stretch and no genre has stretched as far lately as black metal, which has gradually embraced sounds that not one person listening to the first Bathory album back in 1984 would have believed possible. Part of that is because of the advent of post-black metal, which is what Ukrainian band White Ward play.

For three minutes, this is soft piano and teasing saxophone, not the sort of thing you might expect from a traditionally confrontational genre like black metal. Perhaps the cover art influenced me subconsciously, but I felt like I was walking through someone else city where I was at once out of place but somehow still safe and comfortable. Then it veers wonderfully into a vicious section because that's what black metal does best.

As this title track runs on, it continues to alternate between soothing and vicious and the result is something that's very difficult to ignore. As it ends, twelve minutes in, amidst warm and organic pulsing, we know that we've heard something of note and want to go back to the start so as to experience it afresh immediately. I resisted the urge for a change and continued on.

Very few bands have the sheer command of dynamics that White Ward have and I wonder if that's because they came to this style from the opposite direction to usual. Often black metal bands start out raucous and raw and grow into a more diverse, more nuanced, more elegant sound over time. I may be wrong and what I can see on their Facebook page suggests that I am but it sounds to me like White Ward started out as elegant and nuanced and added the black metal vehemence onto that.

Either that or they fit a couple of session musicians into their line-up far more completely than usual. It would beggar belief if Dima Dudko on sax and Stanislav Bobritskiy on keyboards just wandered into the studio one day and laid down the tracks that they were given. They're inherent to this music, a crucial and key part of it, yet I'm not seeing them listed as actual members of the band. Whole sections of these songs simply wouldn't be there without them.

Even for someone like me, who's got used to saxophones in places I wouldn't have expected them, there's a lot here. This is a long album, featuring four songs over ten minutes, interspersed by three shorter ones that still aren't necessarily short. The shortest track here is only just shy of six minutes, meaning a running time of over an hour. It's easy to get caught up with the flow of this album and lose track of time entirely. When it eventually wraps up, it's almost a shock because we're living in the world of White Ward.

I should add here that the world of White Ward isn't quite as soothing as it initially seems. The title track, which opens things up, is warm, welcoming stuff to begin with but it ends on a darker note. Later songs emphasise that even in the quieter sections. Dead Heart Confession opens in a room where a radio is broadcasting about the crimes of Jeffrey Dahmer.

I'm not sure what goes down at the end of Uncanny Delusions and so also the album, but someone is clearly really unhappy about something, screaming her discontent. The band describe their music as "intensely deviant music of a noir share" and that's a neatly poetic way to put it. As welcoming as they often sound, there's a darkness below the surface if we pay attention.

I'm still in love with the Katharsis XIII album of dark jazz that I reviewed in October and this sits well alongside it. It's less jazzy but it's just as full of immersive depth and dynamic range. I'll throw this one onto the same device to listen to in the dark and see if it will stay with me as much.

Desert Colossus - Eyes and Tongues (2020)

Country: Netherlands
Style: Stoner Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 3 Jan 2020
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram

Many of the albums I enjoyed the most in 2019 were stoner rock albums, not a statement I ever thought I'd write. Sure, I've always liked psychedelia, in all its many forms, but I missed out on the ascendancy of stoner rock in the nineties and am now finding myself enjoying it a generation later. I have a lot of groundwork to still do, but I've added Desert Colossus to the growing list of bands to follow.

What surprised me here wasn't that I enjoyed most of it but that it's varied beyond my expectations, perhaps because the influences go beyond the usual, even beyond what the band list on their Facebook page. Amongst the expected stoner rock bands like Kyuss, Fu Manchu and Sleep, I'm easily hearing others they list like Hawkwind, the Sword and Soundgarden, albeit not necessarily throughout the album. While Black Sabbath are the most obvious name that is nowhere to be found on that list, perhaps because they're a gimme, I heard some glam rock here on a couple of tracks too.

That's most obvious on Wicked Man, which feels like Sabbath with a glam rock swagger, but it's there in the pausing two note riff on the opener, Tear Me Down, as it reminds me of Sweet or the Ram Jam Band. As Desert Colossus are Dutch, it may be more of a Golden Earring nod. Anyway, it moves on into the more playful end of stoner rock, very lively and very engaging.

While that's a good song to kick things off, it frankly pales in comparison to the next song, which is fantastic. It's called The One - Eyes and Tongues and so I presume it's the title track. It's also thirteen minutes long and I wasn't bored once, even with a slow repetitive intro. It starts out heavy, a hypnotic approach countered by pausing for the vocals to be delivered during gaps in a frenetic fashion. Partway through, it goes all delicate in a way I might expect for an early Sabbath song, then ramps up instrumentally to the finalé. It's the best song on the album and it's a gem.

From a thirteen minute song to a three minute one. Predicament slips on into play with a cool wail and gets right down to business. It also builds with a hypnotic vibe, but this time it's more akin to Hawkwind with an alternative vocal style. As the songs run on, they continue to change and that's mostly a good thing. Collect Call to Reality is more laid back with a little grunge to flavour it. Null aims for a live punk vibe within a stoner rock framework and it's as in your face as anything here gets.

Wicked Man is my other favourite here, with Predicament hovering behind its shoulder to make itself known too. Beyond being Sabbath with glam swagger, I liked the contrasts in speed. After an intro that feels acutely familiar, it really blisters for a while, like Sabbath on steroids, until it slows down to a pace that, by comparison, feels achingly slow but really isn't, before eventually going back to blister again. I appreciate good use of dynamics and apparently so do Desert Colossus.

What I didn't appreciate was the final song, The Final Signs of the End, as it features a long sample under the music that mostly isn't intelligible so ends up as more of a distraction than a texture. It seems to be some sort of religious rant but it ends up sounding more like a baseball game playing too loud on the radio next door that we're trying to drown out with loud fuzzy guitars. I like the guitars but the clash makes the song feel long. When the eight minute song feels long but the thirteen minute song doesn't, there's a problem.

I hadn't heard Desert Colossus before but this is their third album, after a self titled one in 2016 and Omnibeul in 2017. Both are available at Bandcamp so it shouldn't be hard to check them out. The change between tracks makes me wonder what the band used to sound like and how they're evolving.

Blood Incantation - Hidden History of the Human Race (2019)

Country: USA
Style: Death Metal
Rating: 9/10
Release Date: 22 Nov 2019
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Metal Archives

I'm still collating end of year lists to see if there's any sort of critical consensus about what was greatest last year. What's obvious thus far is that this second album from Denver-based death metallers Blood Incantation was an impressive hit. Even though it was released in late November, it made eleven lists of the best albums of the year and topped one. By comparison, I'm not seeing anyone else on more than seven lists and the four on that many happen to include the amazing Alcest and Opeth albums, as well as the disappointing (to me) Tomb Mold album and one from Inter Arma that I haven't heard yet.

The first impression is that this is very old school death metal. It's low, it's downtuned and it features growly vocals that took me back to the early days of the genre. It's reminiscent of early Death and, if you imagine the vocals buried deeper in the mix, Morbid Angel too. As the opener, As Slave Species of the Gods grows, though, we start to realise just how much depth Blood Incantation are exploring here with a traditional four piece setup of vocals, twin guitars, bass and drums. Yes, that's four: Paul Riedl is doing double duty on guitar and voice.

The Giza Power Plant continues on as Slave Species of the Gods began and the two work very well as a pairing. They're deep and warm and rich songs. Even during the more traditional sections of up tempo death, every member of the band continues to do interesting things. Every time I hear these two songs, and I'm four or five listens through thus far, I catch something new and the whole thing draws me in deeper. This is immersive stuff.

Isaac Faulk's drums caught me first. I love how he blisters along at serious speed but has an equally seriously slow beat going on behind that. There are so many changes that it's a real adventure to keep up with them. Also, while this is predominantly old school death at heart, the second half of The Giza Power Plant ventures into doom/death, with slow guitar and bass over rampant drumming, and it does it really well. There are hints at thrash too, though the band never really go there as a sound.

I mostly see Blood Incantation described as simply death metal and that's no lie but nobody who listens through those first two tracks even once is going to avoid the words technical and progressive. The spaced out intro to track three, Inner Paths (To Outer Space), emphasises both in instrumental form. I did catch some vocal work at the end but there are no words, just texture on top of an already interesting track that's consistent with but travelling in wildly different directions to the opening pair.

Finally, there's what would, in the old days, be side two, because it's just one single song. It's called, and I kid you not, Awakening from the Dream of Existence to the Multidimensional Nature of Our Reality (Mirror of the Soul) and it's almost as long as its title suggests, over eighteen minutes. A mere five seconds more and it would count for half the entire album! That's what we might expect from Yes or Peter Gabriel era Genesis. But do we expect this sort of thing from a death metal band from Denver on the follow up to their debut album? No, we don't. This is seriously ambitious but they pull it off.

In many ways, it's the first half of the album reimagined in a single long, surprisingly coherent track, told in movements that roughly equate to a pair of tracks with an interlude between them and a long and varied outro to take us home. The first five minutes continue on in the old school vibe from the opening couple of songs, taking that old sound as a starting point and then progressing it forward, but the cosntruction is fascinating. The interlude is more spaced out stuff, with an electronic pulse that sounds like a Pink Floyd sample, but we wrap with doomy psychedelia. This really shouldn't work but it does and it does magnificently.

So is this the album of 2019? I've heard a lot of great music thus far and I look forward to a little more over the next month, so there are many albums competing for a title like that in my mind, but I can't deny that it really is up there with the best. I'll fight the other critics about the Tomb Mold album, which really disappointed me, but not about this one. It's astounding for a second album and now I need to track down the first, 2016's Starspawn, while waiting with bated breath for a third.

Burden of Ymir - Jötnar (2020)

Country: Canada
Style: Blackened Folk Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 6 Jan 2020
Sites: Bandcamp | Metal Archives

Here's another one man band to kick off the new year, though I'm really not imagining Joe Caswell busking at the roadside with dozens of instruments on and strapped around his person. He's a Canadian who I believe is generating those instruments in a studio through the magic of synths and, outside those keyboards, I don't know how many he's actually playing in person. I'd guess at the guitars at least and maybe the drums too.

I picked this one out because I'm hearing a lot of great music coming out of Canada of late and this looked interesting. Not only is it a one man cross beween black and folk metal, but it's instrumental and also a concept album, the ten songs on offer representing a different jötun from Norse mythology. Put together, they're jötnar or giants and the music is accordingly big and bombastic.

With an intro and an outro, the first real song is From Hræsvelgr, the Winds and it does rather a lot in its three and a half minutes. It starts out as a strutting folk dance in the Trollfest style, led by bass guitar and followed by accordion. It speeds up midway, initially in the black metal style we're expecting but then with a hint at thrash, which we're not.

Caswell mentions "blackened folk metal" on the Burden of Ymir Bandcamp page, which seems fair as there's a lot more of the latter than the former. Songs like Hosted by Vafþrúðnir highlight that by including no metal at all and a focus on harp as lead instrument. Others, such as the dynamic Because Þrymr Looted the Hammer are clearly metal songs but the folk melodies outweigh the black metal drumming without much effort.

This song was a real delight for me. It ventures into thrash metal as often as black metal and it's sometimes a real heads down system cleanout. I love the dynamics between the folk melodies, whether they're played on guitar or accordion, and the speedy sections. What's most bizarre is that it wraps up with what can only be described as chiptune. I would totally splash out for a game that has me playing a Norse giant stealing Thor's hammer and burying it eight miles deep in the earth as an incentive for Freyja to marry me.

The same goes for the end of Suttungr Seeking Vengeance, as if Caswell came from the world of gaming soundtracks but wanted the musical freedom of this solo project. Jötnar is the first Burden of Ymir album, but there are three previous EPs. The first contains nine tracks but only lasts twenty minutes, so this album would seem to be a real progression.

The best aspect of this album for me is easily its playfulness. The lack of vocals frees the music and allows it to roam free and get up to the sort of shenanigans that always went down in Norse mythology. That story about Þrymr is full of theft, cross-dressing and outlandish feats of eating and the song about it is just as lusty and larger than life, as are the rest. It wouldn't work to create songs called Thus Came Skaði with Bow Held High or By Surtr's Shining Blade and have them be underwhelming and Caswell makes them larger than life.

The worst is the reliance on electronica, because it makes some songs feel a little artificial. The ethereal melody behind the drums on As Eggthér Strums the Harp would normally be played on a flute, but it's surely the product of the synths here and it ends up reminding of the Doctor Who theme tune. That happens on To the Lair of Þjazi as well and it's a little offputting. I have to assume that the harp and accordion are synths too.

This is fun stuff, great to kick off the new year of 2020, even if it might sound even better with a full band playing it live on stage.

Baroness - Gold & Grey (2019)

Country: USA
Style: Progressive Rock
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 14 Jun 2019
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives | Official Website | Twitter | Wikipedia | YouTube

I started out my music reviews here in 2019 by alternating a new album with one from the previous year and I plan to continue in that vein ths January. Throughout this month, I'll be reviewing a new album alongside one from 2019 that I missed out on and has probably received strong critical acclaim. I'm kicking off with the new Baroness album, released last June, because that's been especially well received by critics and recommended to me personally as well.

I hadn't previously heard Baroness but they're a band from Savannah who have apparently evolved their sound over the years from sludge metal to a sort of alternative prog rock that still carries a metal crunch at points but sounds really big in other ways. It's how the songs are put together as much as how they're played, but it's as hard to imagine Baroness on a tiny club stage as it is to imagine Pink Floyd in anything but a vast stadium.

What felt odd to me was how they were at once inviting but deep. On a first listen, I found the songs trying to grab me but failing because they're not that immediate. Prog isn't always immediate, of course, but a more obscure prog album can often be a challenge, sounding awful or even ridiculous until we get on the right wavelength and suddenly realise what genius it is. This isn't that sort of challenging, because it's friendly hook-laden stuff from moment one but there are a lot of other things going on, on multiple layers, so the challenge is to move back far enough to see the big picture.

While the first track is in your face with its highly prominent bass and an odd fuzziness that feels uncomfortably close to static, the majority of the album is introspective, its songs constructed with care. Never mind sludge roots, the 2019 Baroness makes me think of an alternative rock band with a fondness for riffs mainlining on the Beatles until they end up as a combo of Radiohead and the Foo Fighters. These are big songs but they try not to be and, even four or five times through, I still think of this as an hour long piece of music rather than a collection of twelve songs and five interludes.

I first heard about Gold & Grey when a friend mentioned it after I reviewed the new Opeth album. I can see a lot of similarities in something this prog rock being released by a band who didn't start as prog rock in the slightest, but beyond the odd changes and contrary layers that link them, this is often livelier and more bombastic. Sure, there are inwardly looking numbers like Emmett - Radiating Light, but the power chords of Tourniquet just have to be accompanied by big light shows on a huge stage.

What impresses most is that they can follow a song like that with the calm, almost plainsong vocals and soothing strings of Anchor's Lament without us feeling jarred. Even the wild and experimental opening to Throw Me an Anchor doesn't seem abrasive, because by that point we've fully come to terms with the fact that Baroness play from as wide a colour palette as John Baizley in his role as cover artist. He's also the lead vocalist and guitarist and sole surviving founder member.

I have a feeling that I'll be discovering more new things in this album by a fiftieth listen. It's fundamentally rock music, but there's just as much pop in play as there is metal nowadays. I like that Cold-Blooded Angels can seem to be the former only to grow seamlessly into the latter. It even throws in some space rock sound effects for good measure. Other songs feature nods to folk, experimental, jazz, psych, ambient and even new wave. Broken Halo is punk at heart until it launches into a keyboard solo. Can Oscura and Assault on East Falls would feel at home on a krautrock album. Many songs highlight a Pink Floyd influence but, at one point, Borderlines suddenly becomes Thin Lizzy.

While my friend prefers this to the new Opeth album, I'd go the other way. I liked this a lot and expect to listen to it a lot too, but it didn't feel as consistent for me and that periodic fuzz turned me off every time it showed up. I like fuzz, I should add; I just don't like this fuzz. I'm now eager to travel backwards to see what Baroness used to sound like and there are four prior colour-themed albums for me to track down. Thanks, Mike!