psychedelic metal

Record #964: Baroness – Stone (2023)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

I’m a relative newcomer to the Baroness faithful. After falling in love with Purple it took me until Gold & Grey to consider diving deeper into their back catalog. Red Album and Yellow & Green were the first and last records I bought in 2020, and that long digestion process convinced me that they were one of the best metal bands going today, offering a confounding blend of sludge metal, progressive rock, psychedelic, folk, and good ol’ fashioned rock ‘n’ roll that is above reproach. The phrase I kept using in those reviews were “they can do no wrong.”

I’ll admit, Stone is the biggest challenge to that assertion that they’ve offered. My first few listens—which I undertook while distracted—were a little underwhelming. I added them to my year end list out of necessity—I only had twenty-three and needed two more to round it out. Whether that was a self fulfilling prophecy or not, I’m not sure. But what I do know is that I ordered it right after publishing that list, thinking, “how bad can it be? It’s friggin’ Baroness.”

And upon giving it a few close listens, I stand by that claim. Stone offers up plenty of their trademark brand of anthemic heavy metal while also stretching further into new sounds.

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Record #901: Elder – Innate Passage (2022)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

Elder has been one of my favorite active metal bands ever since I heard Reflections of a Floating World, a psychedelic sojourn through doomy riffs and Krautrock-esque instrumental passages. But ever since Lore, much of the discourse around Elder has focused on the balance between metal and prog rock, and as the band has continued, they seem to favor more and more of the latter with each release.

Innate Passage might pose the question of whether they have finally crossed the line between Metal and Not Metal, but Elder doesn’t seem very interested in debating it any further. Instead, they spend an hour offering up epic journeys through massive riffs, third-eye-opening solos, and the catchiest melodies they’ve ever released.

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Record #860: Elder – Dead Roots Stirring (2011)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

Ever since I heard Reflections of a Floating World, I have nurtured a low-key obsession with the Bostonian/German group’s brand of progressive, psychedelic doom metal. After following them to Omens, I’ve started working backward, picking up their back catalog as I can.

Dead Roots Stirring, their sophomore record, might not have anyone hoisting it up as the group’s best album, but this might contain their purest devotion to bands like Black Sabbath, Kyuss, and Sleep without the Rush worship that their later work has been criticized for.

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Record #859: Blood Incantation – Starspawn (2016)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

As I’ve stated before—about this same band—I’m not the biggest fan of technical death metal. But for whatever reason, Blood Incantation somehow manages to bypass my displeasure for the genre’s indulgences. However, my appreciation of the Denver quartet has been satisfied by 2019’s Hidden Histories of the Human Race, the group’s apparent opus, so I haven’t done much exploration of their other material.

That apparently wasn’t enough for my subconscious: whatever nighttime phenomenon caused me to buy Hidden Histories in my sleep struck again, and I was greeted a few days later to a tracking number for a copy of Starspawn that I didn’t remember ordering.

While I expected it to utterly pale in comparison of its successor, Starspawn is a worthwhile work in its own right. Had I heard this instead of Hidden Histories, there’s a good chance that my feelings toward Blood Incantation would be the same.

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Record #778: Blood Incantation – Hidden History of the Human Race (2019)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

As much as I love metal, I don’t usually mess around with technical death metal. By and large, I’m not totally interested in musical pissing contests to see how fast and brutal a band can play.

But I’ve faced a new mystery lately. I’ve had trouble sleeping on and off my whole life, and while it’s not a new thing for me to wake up in the middle of the night, it is a new thing for me to wake up to vinyl purchases that I don’t remember making. These purchases are usually albums that I’ve been meaning to listen to but haven’t yet. The first was Smashing Pumpkins’ Adore, and for the most part, my subconscious purchases have been on a hot streak.

So when I woke up to this order, I thought perhaps Sleepytime Nat had finally stumbled. After all, he should know I’m not into tech death, right?

But to my surprise, this album is staggering. Blood Incantation manages to avoid the pitfalls that ensnare so many of their contemporaries. They don’t abandon the conventions of the genre, but they aren’t limited by them either. They stretch into ambient, psychedelic, and prog, creating an album that feels truly transcendental.

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Record #768: Elder – Lore (2015)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

I’ve been a huge fan of Massachusetts psych-metal outfit Elder from the moment I heard the opening chords of 2017’s Reflections of a Floating World. They combined elements of Black Sabbath’s lurching doom, Kyuss’ sprawling stoner rock, and Rush’s meandering prog in a brilliant package and wrapped it all in a coat of Can’s Krautrock psychedelia. I was powerless to resist it.

Since then, I’ve been searching for copies of their back catalog, and outside of a few high priced copies in Europe, the pickings were slim. But lucky for me, in early 2020, Elder repressed their entire back catalog with the intention of selling them on a world tour. Unlucky for them, that tour was canceled when the pandemic shut the world down. In either case, I have finally acquired their third full length, Lore, which found the band stretching more fully into prog and psychedelic elements. And to incredible success, I might add.

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Record #763: Black Sabbath – Sabotage (1975)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald
Black Sabbath Sabotage vinyl review

Over the last few years, I’ve been making a concerted effort to give Black Sabbath their due. After all, few other bands have such a dominating influence across an entire class of genre. Hundreds of bands are still trading their souls to make music as heavy as their First Six.

Sabotage is the final of this sextet, and I realize now that I’ve mistakenly believed it to be the first step in a downward trend. And while it may not be as untouchable as Master of Reality or Paranoid, it’s maybe the most adventurous of the First Six—and still just as heavy.

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Record #729: Baroness – Yellow & Green (2012)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

Image may contain: 1 personI started 2020 with the realization that Baroness could do no wrong, and that I might as well just buy their entire catalog. Red was the first record I purchased in 2020, and so there’s a certain poetry to the fact that Yellow & Green—the final missing piece in my collection—was the last I purchased.

It’s admittedly an odd choice to purchase this record last—by most accounts, Yellow & Green is their masterpiece: a massive, sprawling double album that finalizes their transformation from sludge metal heroes to genre-defying Metal Gods. It was perhaps that monstrous reputation that me tentative to approach it, but every second of this album lives up to its legacy.

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Record #689: Elder – Omens (2020)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

Three years ago, I fell in love with Elder’s Reflections of a Floating World, an interplanetary blend of doom metal, psychedelic rock, Krautrock, and prog.

Their fifth record Omens takes Reflections’ more meandering elements and lets them really breathe. Synths and electric pianos are just as prominent as crushing guitars, creating an album that feels more Rush than Black Sabbath.

And the results are stunning.

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