TRACK: Baroness - "Take My Bones Away"

Savannah, Georgia's Baroness seem to be gaining more and more of a prominent role in the metal world with every given moment. In their earlier days alot of people gave them flack for being a "Mastodon ripoff", but their fans, including myself, knew they had a sound of their own, and thankfully the rest of the world is finally hopping on board. The band's work up to this point has been a potent and distinct meld of the worlds of sludge metal, stoner rock and progressive rock. As heavy and aggressive as their music could be, it never came across as brooding or misanthropic; rather, the band gave off more of a grand, righteous tone.

The band's third studio album, Yellow & Green has been largely anticipated for quite a while, and in the middle of this month we finally got a new track, "Take My Bones Away". I recognize that the band played this song when I saw them open up for Meshuggah at the beginning of this month; however throughout their set front man John Baizley's guitar was barely audible, and considering he plays the main riff, I didn't get the full experience of the song. But now that a studio recording is available I can hear it with clarity, and even if some fans are on the fence with it, I'm not; I love it.

The reason fans might be on the fence with this one is that the song is likely the most accessible thing they've released so far. The guitar tones have meat on them, but they're clearly less heavy than they were, and as far as Baizley's vocals go he is singing more than he is screaming, and the song has really catchy vocal melodies and an incredibly infectious hook. Even if maybe the hardcore metalhead inside of me is telling me that I shouldn't like it, I can't help but love it. I love it for the same reason I love bands like Torche, and I can even see this album beating Torche's latest, which I was a little lukewarm on.

Overall, not only am I liking this alot just as a change of direction for the band, I can see some readers of this site who aren't so much into metal digging on this. I'd even say that if you can only force yourself to listen to one metal record this year, let it be Yellow & Green.

Give the track a good hearty listen below, and be on the lookout for the new album on July 17th via Relapse Records. It's definitely one of my most anticipated releases, and one I will most certainly review


(If you like metal, or want to get into metal, Robby's your man. Check out his YouTube page for some older metal reviews and some new ones to come)