2012.08.15 Baroness - Yellow & Green

Color: Yellow & Green Split

Released: 2012, July 17

Label: Relapse

Thoughts and prayers and positive vibes over to Baroness and their crew tonight. The band were in accident overseas and have had to cancel all remaining UK dates. Here’s to a speedy and complete recovery to the band.

As if there was ever any doubt that it wouldnt be, the packaging of this record is phenomenal. Lead singer John Baizley’s art gets better and better. There is definitely a thematic progression from all of their previous releases to this one. But I could swear that this double album’s art features a clarity and texture that the previous covers did not have. In addition, this limited first pressing came in a hardbound book featuring 28 pages of additional art to go along with all of the album lyrics and credits. The front and back cover succeed on their own but read as one continuous gorgeous image when considered as a whole. And of course the wax discs themselves are beautiful and are labeled in the corresponding color of their album side. Baizley defintiely understands album art and the practice of creating an experience for this listener. The music on this double album is very challenging - the band have always been about progression and pushing the envelope of the genre they’ve been lumped into for their entire career, but on this release they have pushed further than ever before. I applaud the band for this… the result is varying success. Yellow is the less shocking half of what the band have come up with and comes across as a comfortable balance between the Baroness that fans have known and loved and what Baroness aspires to be in the present. For me, “Green” pushes maybe just a bit too far. Generally, I find myself at odds with this half of the band’s new double offering. I’m not sure if it’s just the shock of how far they are stretching or if the execution just falls short here. Yellow & Green will either go down in history as the band’s greatest achievement, once even those resistant to its change come around, or it will be remembered an ambitious move that produced a full album of triumphs coupled with an album’s worth of slight missteps.