Stone, the new Baroness album, is the first by the Savannah band without a color in its title, but it still has everything expected in a Baroness record. The band has gone through multiple lineup changes since forming in 2003, with frontman John Baizley the only constant. The shifting personnel has brought different flavors to each album, though each has the key Baroness ingredients combining a variety of hard rock genres. Like on other albums, Stone deftly combines elements of metal, progressive rock, psychedelia, and folk. It has bone-crunching heaviness at times and soft vulnerability at others.
The album was written over Zoom calls during lockdown, with each member bringing music they were working on and seeing how it fits together. Some of the songs sound like the melding of different ideas, but that’s nothing new for Baroness.
The album starts with the finger-picked acoustic guitars of “Embers.” Baizley’s voice is soft and breathy, harmonized by bassist Nick Jost and lead guitarist Gina Gleason. “I lost my senses, I lost my way; I can’t remember why. Build me a home of ember and chain, leave me a simple life,” they sing in hushed tones that evoke a sense of longing.
The tone set by the gentle one-minute song is immediately contrasted by the aggressive thrash metal intro of “Last Word.” The expectation on a metal album, especially following a light opening song, would be for the band to flex its muscles on the second track, but Baroness throws another curveball. Several instrumental portions of the song feature Baizley’s aggressive palm-muted rhythm and Sebastian Thomson’s pounding drums, but the verses and choruses scale back the attack and add more melody. “When I am wired to oblivion, I’m closer to the end; we all become the setting sun,” Baizley sings, his vocals fleshed out with harmonies and Gleason’s clean melodic licks. A Gleason solo leads to more thrash riffing, but the song ends on a melodic outro.
“Last Word” encapsulates what makes Baroness so interesting. They can match any good metal band’s heaviness but deliver that power only in key moments, complemented by intricate melodies and progressive song compositions that prevent the music from ever getting stale.
“Beneath the Rose,” with its violent imagery and head-banging riffs, feels dangerous. “I want to say this is for the best, but when you’re hanging from the rafters in my attic, you know I’ll never let you down,” Baizley says, his voice a half-spoken, half-sung drone. As the dynamic song shifts tempos, it careens between galloping palm-muted riffs and staccato power chords, between tight ferocity and loose grooves, with Baizley’s voice shifting from a snarl to clean.
Those dynamics are present throughout the album. The gentle croon of “The Dirge” precedes the grimy sludge metal of “Anodyne.” The album’s best moments are when Baroness captures those dynamics within a single song. The prog-metal anthem “Shine” fuses crunching riffs and pessimistic lyrics — ”we’re wonders that refuse to shine ”— with moments of beauty, such as the acoustic picking in the intro and the arpeggiated bridge.
Though Stone isn’t quite as heavy as early Baroness albums — there’s no growling, for one — the progressive and psychedelic elements continue to take the metal music in exciting directions. As one of the few bands to combine angry metal guitars, progressive structures, and Americana twang and actually have it work, Baroness has carved out its own niche within the metal landscape. On Stone, that landscape is thoroughly explored, from the depths of the dirtiest sludge to beautiful rootsy vistas to the expanse of the cosmos.
