Baroness - Blue Record

There are times we want our ears to be drilled without mercy. That's when we listen to heavy artillery from bands like Lamb Of God. But there are times when we want to hear good metal, hard and strong but without risk of permanent hearing damage. That's when a record like "Blue Record," the second album by American band Baroness, enters the picture. This quartet formed in Georgia, included, by the way, in the next Coachella Festival lineup, features 12 hymns, heavies, energetics, theatricals, with hard guitars always galloping (although not necessarily aggressive) and old school melodic solos. Heavy metal, pompous and raw at the same time, which intersects with alternative rock, doom metal and, following the path of bands like Mastodon, touches of progressive metal perhaps with not much complexity but in pieces like "A Horse Called Golgotha" or "War, Wisdom And Rhyme ", with textures, instrumental passages and rhythmic changes, is enough to give another level to their sound while songs like "Jake Leg" or "The Sweetest Curse ", rude and direct, maintains the metal rage in the album. A magnificent metal disk: epic, vital and noisy. -CORANNIEIT-

Baroness, Blue Record
Relapse Records, 2009

Links:
Official Site
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Pelican - What We All Come To Need

Pelican is one of those bands that hardly make a bad record. His discography is probably one of the most consistent of the post-metal scene and "What We All Need To Come," their fourth album, is not exception. In it, these young masters of metal plays long pieces of heavy music full of chiaroscuros in which Trevor de Brauw and Laurent Schroeder-Lebec guitars continue alternating distorted riffs and chords, full of power, with moments of lightness and, if we can use the term, a certain delicacy, playing an instrumental heavy metal that at times approaches to progressive rock, post-rock and stoner rock. For some tracks the band includes Greg Anderson (Sunn o)))) and Aaron Turner (Isis) in addition to Allen Epley (Shiner) vocals in "Final Breath", first non-instrumental song recorded by the quartet (although actually this does not improves the sound of the band). Perhaps slightly more relaxed (so to say) than "City Of Echoes" or "The Fire In Our Throats Will Beckon The Thaw", "What We All Need To Come" stay at the same level as their predecessors but specially keeps the well known Pelican´s dark power. -CORANNIEIT-

Pelican, What We All Come To Need
Southern Lord Records, 2009

Links:
Official Web Site
My Space Web Site

Mastodon - Crack The Skye

Masterfully combining the full power of metal with progressive rock cerebral structures, this band from Atlanta give their fourth album "Crack The Skye" which like its predecessor, the furious "Blood Mountain", is a conceptual album about a bizarre story that include Rasputin, the Tsarist Russia, astral travels, spirits and demons. Perhaps slowed and less aggressive than "Blood Mountain", but also so much darker and ambitious, "Crack The Skye" confirms that the quartet's music goes far beyond the power chords and headbanging delivering 9 songs (including instrumental versions of a couple of pieces) with an elaborated and full of nuances sound without losing its hard, heavy and often clangorous essence. Much closer to Tool than to Dream Theater, Mastodon go in prog metal using, without abuse, progressive elements (passages, structures, etc.) to achieve a more sophisticated sound while maintaining an always rude and visceral attitude. With the guitarists Brent Hinds and Bill Kelliher playing wild chords but also solos that winks to David Gilmour, the album passes so overwhelming between pieces as "Quintessence," with a progressive start and final explosively heavy, "Ghost Of Karelia" , with a phantasmal riff that immediately takes us back to "Schism" from Tool, and "The Last Baron" a monumental, and perhaps the best summary of Mastodon's music, such that at the end leave us exhausted and not by their 13:00 minutes of duration, but by the intensity that reaches: after 3 minutes of simple and almost inconsequential metal "The Last Baron" takes off and starts to level up until it reach a quite progressive passage, with no signs of metal, then turn into a 100% Toolean music full of power that leads to the headbanging, finishing with another Gilmourean solo. Without rest nor truce along 50 minutes, Mastodon delivery in "Crack The Skye" elaborated and ambitious music, but above all, no-mercy intense metal. -CORANNIEIT-

Mastodon, Crack The Skye
Reprise, 2009

Links:
Official Website
My Space Site