Baroness
Purple

Faced with the new Baroness album and the enthusiastic reactions of the critics, it's impossible not to bring up Mastodon and make a comparison. The metaphor might be this: Mastodon is the rough country cousin, the one who slaps you on the back leaving a red mark. The rural cousin, however, wants to appear friendly and over time has opened up more and more to the city folk, slightly softening his rough exterior.

Baroness is the city cousin: definitely less talented than the other, but more cunning and capable of taking only the good things the other has to offer, making them their own and presenting them in a simpler, more friendly guise, intended for people who can't devote too much time and want to immediately understand what they have to say.

Here we are, the parallel, intertwined, and alternating fortunes of the two bands are going about like this. After years in which Mastodon dominated the scene, relegating Baroness to a role of decent followers, in the last five years the situation seems to have reversed. Or at least, according to some critics like Pitchfork or certain Italian publications not very experienced with metal. Mastodon almost screwed themselves in 2011 with The Hunter, a heavily criticized pause album that came after four giants; Baroness, on the other hand, started to surpass their masters with Yellow & Green in 2012. Certainly fresher than the angry cousin from Atlanta, it was praised by various outlets: Pitchfork gave it 8.5/10 and some critics said that «Baroness are today what Mastodon failed to become: a band that transcends boundaries and definitions» (SentireAscoltare). At the first opportunity, the bear-cousin was put in a position of inferiority. It was understandable because in that case, the work of Baizley and company was more convincing, though far from the levels supposed by Pitchfork.

The problem emerges like a boil in front of the last two productions: Once More ‘Round the Sun and the freshly released Purple. Even in this case, the trend is as stated above. Mastodon's has been received fairly well, but there's always a but. The usual band censors from Sanders and Dailor didn't miss the chance to hit hard: Pitchfork 6.3, SentireAscoltare even 5.9. Truly absurd ratings for an album that combined metal fury and refined melodies, certainly with some somewhat plastic episodes, but also many appreciable ideas.

The circle closes with Purple: an album clearly retreating in ambitions, following an incident that led to the departure of some Baroness members. Right from the first two singles, it showed its modest stature: Chlorine & Wine is a pleasant crescendo but really simple and straightforward. Shock Me is an impactful rock-metal song, but too appealing and with a very radio-friendly chorus. Like High Road and Motherload from Mastodon, but here it extends to the entire album. Thunderous and easy-to-remember choruses, some sanitized sludge forays, melodic verses but not too sugary (like the more daring ones from the previous album). Brief durations, few tracks, no proper ballad, just a melancholic closing track (If I Have to Wake Up): in short, a formula calculated to the millisecond to please Pitchfork. Which indeed promptly arrived with a ridiculous 8.5/10.

The reasons for this favorable treatment, putting aside the theory of the cool cousin and the rough one, could be two. On one hand, the vocal lines and timbres: John Baizley has a rock voice, scratchy but not too much, which can appeal to almost everyone. While Hinds, Sanders, and Dailor pass the microphone around as if they were Take That. I mean, they're too metal or too sweet (Dailor): they always end up displeasing someone.

On the other hand, there's the complexity: Baroness has less talent and less imagination, so they play simpler songs within the metal context. This pleases critics less familiar with the genre, who reward immediacy at the expense of, for example, the layering of Once More ‘Round the Sun. That's why listening to Purple is a joy: it's metal but not too much, it's rough but not too much, and yet not too blatantly commercial. There, the band from Savannah has found its path in mediocrity: they're also good at carrying it forward, the album flows wonderfully. But in this way, a race to the bottom is unfolding, where the cousins from Atlanta instead would be trying to open up to a wider audience without giving up on almost any of their metallic makeovers.

To get a precise idea, just listen to the closure of this album, entrusted to the inoffensive poignancy of If I Have to Wake Up (Would You Stop the Rain?), and compare it with Diamond in the Witch House: a small nightmare in the style of Neurosis with Scott Kelly's demonic voice. This is enough to highlight the divergence between the two musical paths undertaken.