Baroness: Purple ALBUM REVIEW

It happens every year; an album comes out just after I release my top 10 that actually ends up being so good, I wish I would have waited so I could give it a spot on the list. While this may be a fact year to year I am very happy to say that this year's just so happens to be the new Baroness record. Because while I like Yellow & Green a fair bit, I've been waiting for them to take the directness of their early work and fuse it with that albums ambition and melody, and as luck would have it, Purple does just that.

The album is essentially nine tracks, with the outro being only about seventeen seconds and a really nice A/B side divider instrumental called "Fugue" that is a really awesome change of pace for the record. The tracks up until that point however are no slouch; especially cuts like "Morningstar" and "Shock Me" which has one of the band's strongest hooks ever. Longer cuts like "Kerosene" and "Chlorine & Wine" show how the ambition of the last album can be put to good use in a non- double album format, with intricate song structures and great tempo shifts that keep these longer tracks feeling fresh and full of momentum.

That's another thing that this album really does possess as a whole, momentum. Though the LP is obviously shorter at around 43 minutes, it doesn't even feel that long; instead, we get an album that has a near flawless flow throughout. The only track that kind of stops things is "The Iron Bell" which isn't bad, but fells like a lesser form of the album's early moments. But even the lesser moments on Purple are still some of the best I've heard on a Metal album all year.

I almost wish the band had released this album earlier in the year just so the metal community could have more time to analyze and understand it, because while it is getting a lot of high praise (and rightfully so), I still wish I could have put it on my end of the year list.

So, I can with complete confidence say that this new Baroness record is one of the band's best, and a shining example of how melody can be incorporated into heavier styles of music without taking the edge off of the music.

9.0/10