Baroness @ Warehouse Live

Note from the baconator: Everybody flash your electronic devil horns at our newest contributor: Démian “Waffles” Lieck. He’s my favorite metal-head and he’ll probably be yours too after you check out his excellent review. I’ll absolutely cosign on his opinion on Baroness; be sure to check them out if you’re into music and have eardrums calibrated to handle the heavier end of the spectrum. Stay tuned to BoT for more of his informed-and-entertaining metal coverage in the future!

Tuesday night made my third go-round with the Savannah, Georgia-spawned progressive-sludge-southern-metal, hyphen-inducing quartet Baroness. The band is fresh off the release of their sophomore effort, Blue Record. Their much-anticipated follow-up to Red Album was recorded right here in Texas and has been met with much critical praise. Check out the rest of my review along with some of Eggs’ pics after the jump.

Words by Démian “Waffles” Lieck
Photos by Jim “Eggs” Bricker

These guys have come a long way since the first time I saw them. Shortly following the release of Red Album, I had a chance to catch Baroness blow the roof off of Rudyard’s upstairs room for what I would guess was twenty or thirty people. It was possibly the loudest show I’ve ever been to in a venue that size… but to be honest I didn’t mind the blood dripping from my ears because they delivered a hell of a performance. Going into that show I had only heard six or seven tracks, mostly from their first two EPs, but after that evening, it was safe to say I was a big Baroness fan. Since that fateful night, Baroness has gone through some changes. For one, they parted ways with guitarist Brian Blickle; but in my estimation, they've more than made up for his departure with the addition of guitarist/vocalist Pete Adams (also of Valkyrie). The band has toured nearly non-stop; their last stop in Houston being a brief, but nonetheless rocking performance in support of Clutch at the House of Blues. They’re now bonafide road warriors. It was apparent Tuesday night that over the course of their travels they’ve evolved from a raw act oozing with potential into a full-blown metal powerhouse.

Eggs and Bacon, for reasons still unbeknownst to me (as they don’t… uhh… “get” metal) decided to join me and a few other friends for Baroness’ Tuesday night gig at Warehouse Live. Openers Iron Age apparently had to cancel, but we arrived just in time to catch the super-sludgey sounds of Dark Castle. The sludge-doom duo hails from Saint Augustine, Florida but nothing about their sound says “Sunshine State”. Their set was super-heavy and outside of one pause for a technical glitch, their show was a completely unbroken assault of sound. Rob Shaffer’s uber-physical, ominous drumming set the pace for Stevie Floyd’s growling cadences, guitar, and synthesized noise. For lack of a more appropriate term, watching Shaffer on the drums was fucking epic. If you dig doom metal, check this guy and gal out for sure.

Shortly after Dark Castle finished up, Baroness took the stage. Looking perhaps equal parts trucker, Viking, and artist, John Baizley has an intensity about him. He has a look that says "I am about to audibly punch you in the face… and you are going to like it." He has a great presence as a front man and the band follows his lead with every bit as much intensity. Baizley and Adams’ vocal and guitar chemistry is impressive. They harmonize you to hell, heaven, and back, alternating between beautiful guitar arrangements laced with spacey, ambient volume swells and galloping, low down, dirty riffs that spawn images of medieval battlefield glory. Baroness is one those bands that not only fully replicates the sound of their studio material when they play live- they make it better. If you like their studio work, you’ll love them live.

The band opened up with the soft-then-explosive first three tracks from Blue Record and then spun into an awesome selection from Hendrix and the Band of Gypsys’ “Machine Gun” which they seamlessly morphed into “Isak”, one of my favorites from Red Album. Being a die-hard Hendrix fan, this was a definite highlight for me. There really was never a dull moment in the set. The band ventured through their catalogue and completely nailed songs like “The Birthing”, “A Horse Called Golgotha”, “Red Sky”, and “Swollen and Halo”. The crowd loved every bit and no one looked ready to go home when they closed with the lonely, lumbering-to-climactic “Grad”; possibly my favorite of their many great songs. There was, unfortunately, no encore. While I and a pretty big chunk of the crowd were still screaming for more, the house switched the P.A. over to some awkward post-show Snoop Dogg and we figured that was it. But my friends and I were far beyond satisfied with show. There were plenty of “that was fucking awesome”s going around and even Bacon, with his alt-country/hip-hop sensibilities had an awesome experience popping his virginal metal cherry.

Baroness really puts everything they’ve got into their live show. The band has a kind of humble earnestness about them that I have always liked. This is a band that seems unconcerned with metal pretensions. They are doing their own thing and it’s working for them. It’s rare that a band with the amount of ass-stomping “djent” that Baroness dishes out can still maintain accessibility to the metal novice. In a similar fashion to their fellow Georgians, Mastodon, Baroness has a sound that can reach beyond the cold black gates of the metalhead universe. Expect to see and hear a lot more about them in the future. And if you have a chance to see them live, do it!