Baroness - Yellow And Green (2012)

Rumpelstiltskin Grinder are on Candlelight now. BURN.

― Hamster of Legend (J3ff T.), Wednesday, July 18, 2012 4:15 PM (10 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

haaaaaah

This thread is kind of all time, by the way, even if the Nickelback comparisons have forever killed the record for me.

I can't hear Nickelback in it! Is everyone just accepting that that's for sure?

I heard Nickelback at first but it's fading after three or four listens. Second disc is growing too, but I'm still skipping a couple of tracks on it.

Just listened to this today. I heard no Nickelback but the vocals got a little Scott Stapp-ish there in some spots IMO...

This is probably my favorite Baroness record yet but yeah, its got like 5 songs too many...

i'm thinking a lot of you are maybe hearing more your idea of what chad kroeger's vocals sound like than his actual voice? cause if this is what nickelback sounded like i'd enjoy them a lot more.

i really like it, tho i'm wondering whether the 5 best tracks from this and the 5 best from the christian mistress album would make a one-disc to rock the world

^^^

otm. I thought at first you guys were just using "Nickelback" as some sort of shorthand for arena ready alt-rock, because this sounds absolutely nothing like Nickelback to my ears.

oops otm to Mordy's first post

yeah i think ppl are using "nickelback" as shorthand for "5th-generation grungy radio rock"

more in a theory of a deadman style

it was just the voice for me. though i did keep replaying their songs into my head just to make sure there was some qualitative difference and i wasn't being fooled.

I never see Gentle Giant rekkids for cheap, if I did I'd have probably made an effort to get into them

also $66 holy moly, I'm sure the vinyl for this looks pretty but I can't imagine ever caring about format enough to spend, what, four times as much as the same thing would cost on CD?

There's definitely a spectrum on this from alt-rock to whiny indie, with Little Things & Psalms Alive at the whiny end, vocally + lyrically + musically.

if you've got your headphones up too loud, that snare hit on 'green theme' is like, holy shit

"Eula" really reminds me of Cave In ca. the Jupiter LP.

yeah, that seems like a good comparison point overall.

just barely beginning to listen to this, but yellow is fantastic, holy shit. if green even half measures up, i'm a fan. don't hear nickelback in the least, btw. it's gruff, post-grunge rock-as-pop, but beyond sharing space in that theme park, the two have nothing in common. plus, it's not like i hate nickelback as the product of a generic objection to their sound palette. i hate them because they are fucking nickelback, because i am offended by their songs, musical personality and the living human presence of chad kroeger. i seems plausible that someone might make great music that happened to sound roughly similar. someone else, i mean...

"little things" is the only song i even half half want to dislike, just not a fan of angsty accusations in this kind of music. but i love the feel of the chorus and especially the bassline, almost postpunk, or like something rush might have done circa signals. and that guitar solo! also, i don't see why people are saying this isn't a metal album. it is. it's not a particularly aggressive one. i like the relative gentleness and accessibility, fwiw. and they do stomp some from time to time, like at the end of "cocanium".

love the combination of baroque, proggy psychedelia and dark, angsty 90s-style rock, like on "back where i belong" and "twinkler". shouldn't work, but does.

"fuck the purists" becomes a funnier line with every description of this I read. Beethoven's Kreutzer Sonata is the best rap album of the year, fuck the purists!

In an ILM-world where we discuss Alestorm, Nightwish, Mastodon, Alcest etc on Rolling Metal idk what makes Baroness not metal. (ok maybe not Alestorm so much but insert generic troll metal band here)

Baroness is certainly not less metal than Eluviete

yellow does get a little shlocky towards the end with "sea lungs" and "eula"

Baroness is less metal than Avril Levigne </sinker>

green is mostly a drag, sadly. maybe it'll grow on me, but i got bored on the first pass. and i genuinely hate "board up the house". it's definitely got moments ("MTNS." is great, second half of "psalms alive" perks things up for a couple minutes), but this probably should have been a single album.

they are certainly trying to be a good band...like there are some riffs and musical passages that are cool...but it's like they have to WORK to be cool, they are -- to their core -- not cool, like there is something not appealing about this....it's just a high functioning "active rock radio" band

i admire the effort and all, but ultimately it's one of those albums that fails the test of "why am i spending my time listening to this instead of other things i could be listening to?"

like i can't imagine really *caring* about this unless you were somewhat invested in the idea that there needs to be quality mainstream-ish hard rock bands

like i can't imagine really *caring* about this unless you were somewhat invested in the idea that there needs to be quality mainstream-ish hard rock bands

actually that's my hope with stuff like this - I didn't really love Yellowcard & the Mars Volta & whoever else all those bands were around the time that people who'd been into the Get Up Kids discovered prog, but I kind of liked having it around. Baroness aren't the shreddingest but any time something shred-related charts I count it as a plus

i don't think you have to run music through the sorting hat before deciding whether or not you might like it. frankly, i don't think you should. ultimately, this isn't "high functioning 'active rock radio'" fodder or w/e. it's just music, and you either like it or you don't.

"cool" seems pretty meaningless as an evaluative criteria to begin with, unless you're just using it to mean "good". i mean, there's plenty of music out there that seems smart, stylish and clued-in, but which doesn't move me at all. meanwhile, i LOVE all kinds of dorky, uncool, sansabelt shit. i like this music because it's expansive, affecting and catchy. i like the musicianship, ideas, ambition and production. i even like that it doesn't seem to be particularly cool. it's both geeky and commercial, and seems to have no shame about either. i respect that. it's like wearing a headband just to keep the hair out of your eyes.

green really does yellow a disservice, though. throws all the most uncool aspect into harsh relief, while also being a big step down musically.

i think you've got that first bit backwards

i don't think you have to run music through the sorting hat before deciding whether or not you might like it. frankly, i don't think you should.

this is a whole different thread but I gotta say: I agree & yet I don't. Music's music, in the final analysis the only thing that matters is whether it brings you pleasure/joy/comfort/etc or not. And yet. Genres and scenes are often places where a common language - the music of that genre or scene - unites people and gives them voice. So while ultimately all that matters is the sound, when a band comes up through a subculture, questions of whether they're still part of that subculture are valid enough, I think; and those questions are going to involve delineating where "metal" stops and "rock" starts, etc.

i'm always rooting for good new rock bands. i'm a rock fan. but i rarely hear stuff that excites me. i think the smell of the 90's on baroness is what turns me off. i hate so much 90's rock. i just hate the way it sounds.

i like kylesa okay. i love converge a ton and i don't listen to ANYTHING that sounds like converge. so, they are definitely the exception to the rule. but converge are never gonna light up modern rock radio.

i mean i don't listen to anything else that sounds like converge. you know what i mean. i like harvey milk a bunch. another 90's band whose later stuff i like a lot more a la converge.

i don't dig torche at all. don't get the love for them. i mean i guess if i grew up on grunge i would like them more or something.

hah nothing about torche scans as "grunge" to me

post-grunge then.

i don't like torche either. not sure why, either, as i quite like the one floor album i own.

contenderizer i meant "cool" like it's not ultimately good or quality...it's a whole lot of effort being expended to not being mediocre but they are just mediocre at core.

i don't know what headbands or whatever yr talking about has to do w/it

record is also produced like shit too, really bad instrument tones for the most part, except the more gimmicky ones which are cool on occaission.

torche does this better imo, you could say the same things abt them but they have a kinda bubblegummy first two foo fighters albums vibe that i can dig on to some extent

i don't like ghost either. or high on fire. i like earthless, are they still around? i loved the last tia carrera album. that album was great. one of my favorite rock albums from last year was by the dude from pansonic! that's how weird things have gotten.

yeah, foo fighters to me are the enemy. one of the worst bands on the planet.

i mean i shouldn't bitch about how the record sounds, there will hardly be any good sounding "pro" rock albums ever from now on so i better get used to it. and this isn't particularly obnoxious or anything. it's just good bass & drum sound are lost to history mostly. :(

not liking high on fire is madness imo

i mean i shouldn't bitch about how the record sounds, there will hardly be any good sounding "pro" rock albums ever from now on so i better get used to it. and this isn't particularly obnoxious or anything. it's just good bass & drum sound are lost to history mostly. :(

fwiw the producer on the Baroness album got his chops at electrical audio and is noted for good drum tones. if they don't sound good that's a little surprising.

Genres and scenes are often places where a common language - the music of that genre or scene - unites people and gives them voice. So while ultimately all that matters is the sound, when a band comes up through a subculture, questions of whether they're still part of that subculture are valid enough, I think; and those questions are going to involve delineating where "metal" stops and "rock" starts, etc.

― tallarico dreams (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Thursday, July 19, 2012 11:18 AM (13 minutes ago)

yeah, i get that, but i'm very suspicious of the tendency to disparage things simply because they seems to belong to the wrong culture camp (paging poster g. postgarten). reminds me of how all the cool kids in the late 80s seemed to agree that like phil collins, steely dae and journey were horrible, inexcusable crap, the worst of the worst. people can like or hate whatever they want, but it just seemed like dumb groupthink, and i love a lot of music made by desperately uncool popstars.

what the hell are you talking about

your mom

think the drums (and other instruments) sound pretty good throughout

no one here did what you are describing so i'd like to know what you are talking about

i mean i shouldn't bitch about how the record sounds, there will hardly be any good sounding "pro" rock albums ever from now on so i better get used to it. and this isn't particularly obnoxious or anything. it's just good bass & drum sound are lost to history mostly. :(

fwiw the producer on the Baroness album got his chops at electrical audio and is noted for good drum tones. if they don't sound good that's a little surprising.

― tallarico dreams (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Thursday, July 19, 2012 1:38 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

actually yeah listening again and it's more...i dunno....something that rubs me the wrong way not the drums.

contenderizer, fwiw there is literally nothing could possibly care less about than what's "real" metal or whatever.

i only check out metal albums that i feel like will get slagged by the metal crV for not being trV, which is why i bothered to listen to this.

yeah i guess i am guilty of that. i've never really thought of baroness (or kylesa) as "METAL" whereas no matter what kind of record someone like Ihsahn makes they will always be "METAL" to me. but that's just silly fan/genre thinking. what are you gonna do.