Anybody who has even the most passing familiarity with this blog can tell that there are a few musical tropes that I cannot resist. Among them are crushing walls of sound, ominous, glacial tempos, lush atmospheres, and emotional female voices.
And Big Brave from Montreal delivers all these in spades, combining each of my favorite colors into a stunning landscape that is at once sonically crushing and achingly gorgeous.
I 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.
Emma Ruth Rundle has spent most of her career on the fringes of the metal scene. Besides playing guitar in prog/post-metal band Red Sparowes, the gothic folk of her solo work and Nocturnes and the spacey ambience of Marriages has always had a darkness that can’t totally be called metal, but it doesn’t quite fit outside of it.
Similarly, the thick, tar-throated sludge of Baton Rouge’s Thou has always coated over a tender melodic heart that would escape most listeners, buried as it was beneath layers of molten guitar.
On paper, there’s little in common between the two. But the collaborative album May Our Chambers Be Full proves that the two entities have much more in common than you might think.
My love affair with Baroness wasn’t an immediate one. Even after becoming a fan, it took me a while to be fully convinced.
But delving into their back catalogue the last few months, I have realized that they are one of the best bands around. Despite the diversity of their sonic palette, everything they do is absolutely untouchable.
This realization has bid me to systematically buy my way through all of their albums, which brings me to The Blue Record, their wonderful second record.
Speaking of lurching, post rock informed sludge metal…
Ohio’s Mouth of the Architect has long held my ear as one of the must crushing yet beautiful post metal bands around. Quietly is one of the most gorgeous and visceral records I’ve ever heard. So when a friend gave me this split, also featuring the instrumental, fellow Daytonians Kenoma, my hopes were high.
And that hope did not disappoint.
For the last six years, post metal heroes ISIS have been one of my favorite bands. From the first time I heard the crushing, glacial riffs of Panopticon, I was smitten. As I became more familiar with their other works, I regarded that album as a watershed moment: a turning point that would set the direction for the rest of their career, as well as direction for an entire direction of metallurigists.
A few weeks ago, I found that album’s predecessor, Oceanic, for the lowest price I’d ever seen it, so I ordered it without being totally familiar with it. And now, I must recant the narrative I’ve drawn around their discography. While Panopticon may have perfected the post-rock tinged sludge metal that they are celebrated for, Oceanic pioneered it. Continue reading
If you’ve followed this blog at all, you’re already well aware that I have a very soft spot for a particular kind of heavy, glacial, melodic sludge metal (see: Isis, Cult of Luna, Mouth of the Architect, Spotlights, etc).
My friend Alex knows this, and so when he heard Bloodletting, the latest full length from California post metal outfit Mountaineer, his first reaction was to send me the link.
A few songs in, my first reaction was to buy the record. Said record has a label on it that says, “For Fans Of: Cult of Luna, Alcest, Torche, and Baroness.” That’s a pretty bold FFO if you can’t back it up. Luckily, Bloodletting proves it in spades.
When I first stumbled upon the wonderful post-hardcore supergroup Less Art last year, I was a little unfamiliar with the home projects of the members. Obviously, I am a longtime and die hard fan of Thrice, but I had only given a precursory listen to Curl Up and Die, and had never heard of Kowloon Walled City at all.
But, the strength of Less Art invited me to look into them, and oh, am I glad I did.
Container Ships, their 2012 sophomore record, is a patient, cerebral piece of heavy music that blends sludge metal and post-hardcore in a brilliant way that lands somewhere between ISIS and Fugazi.
As difficult as music taxonomy is on its own, metal brings its own challenges. The delineations between the different subgenres get so microscopic that it feels pointless.
For years, I struggled to figure out where exactly sludge metal fits. Many of the bands typically labeled sludge felt more like post metal to me. Others were undeniably doom.
But this record is undeniably sludge: it is thick and heavy, oozing out of the turntable for eighty minutes.
After falling in love with Purple a few years ago and Gold & Grey more recently, I’ve decided that it’s high time I dig deeper into Baroness’ celebrated back catalog.
And with just a precursory listen to their first three records, they’ve established themselves as a band that can do no wrong. This is clearly displayed on their debut full-length, Red Album, a nonstop, heavy metal tour-de-force.