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Review: Baroness/Graveyard/Pallbearer, Marble Factory
Arkansas doomsters Pallbearer last played on this stage way back in 2015, when they were one of the great surprise pleasures of that year’s Temples festival.
Much has changed in their world since then, as the quartet’s music has taken a audience-expanding proggier turn. But there’s still plenty to delight old-school doomsters in the band’s very lengthy songs with gloriously hypnotic riffing.
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They open with Silver Wings from their Nuclear Blast debut Forgotten Days, which marked their emergence as one of key bands of modern metal. Then it’s on to great newie Mind Burns Alive for standouts Signals and With Disease.
In a genre of growlers, Brett Campbell is an actual singer, infusing these songs with rare emotion, which puts Pallbearer well ahead of the doom pack. They don’t have much time to play with tonight, but manage to reach back to 2014’s Foundations of Burden for an epic Worlds Apart – delighting the faithful and new converts alike.
Putting Pallbearer and Graveyard on the same bill was a thematic no-brainer (it’s just a shame Death are no longer around). But in fact they occupy very different musical territory, which makes for a refreshing contrast. Temporarily expanded to a quintet with the addition of a touring guitarist, the Swedes look like a great lost bluesy hard rock band from the early 1970s. Pleasingly, that’s exactly what they sound like too.
As usual, the set is dominated by their breakthrough Hisingen Blues album, with the title track, Ain’t Fit to Live Here and Uncomfortably Numb all getting very welcome outings.
Frontman Joakim Nilsson skips around the stage while lead guitarist Jonatan Larocca-Ramm gives it plenty of authentic blueswailing guitar. There’s even a big psychedelic breakdown (with mercifully brief drum solo) during Walk On. Anyone who arrived here via a timeslip from 1973 would feel right at home, and that’s no bad thing.
“I love Bristol very much. I just have a strange history with this place.”
John Baizley isn’t exaggerating. He might be from Savannah, Georgia, but he’ll always have an unwanted link to this part of the world after Baroness’s horrific near-fatal bus crash following a memorable show at the Fleece back in 2012. Since then, he’s rebuilt his body and his band with remarkable success. Baizley might be the sole original member these days, but Baroness are bigger than ever. Many of the punters here tonight were probably in short trousers at the time of the Fleece show, but all of us old buggers are still here too.
They don’t really go in for the big production thing, with just a giant backdrop and lighting coordinated with their colour-coded albums (blue lights for songs from Blue, red lights for songs from Red and so on). Three songs from current album Stone are dispatched early in the set, beginning with the storming Last Word.
What’s really impressive about Baroness is that they don’t sound like anyone else, so when you try to draw comparisons it’s always with early Baroness songs. They’re not alt- or post-anything, as is the fashion these days, just a great American progressive heavy metal band with their own distinctive sound, driven by Baizley’s emotive bellow.
But it’s impossible not to notice what an asset Gina Gleason has become to the band, on both guitar and vocals. Her metal credentials include stints in all-female tribute acts to Metallica and King Diamond (Misstallica and Queen Diamond, obviously) and she’s also played with everyone from Jon Anderson to Carlos Santana, so brings a wealth of experience to Baroness and really excels on those harmony guitar parts with Baizley.
March to the Sea and Green Theme from Yellow & Green receive huge cheers of recognition and Baizley also revisits the Purple album for a bunch of songs about his recuperation and recovery: If I Had to Wake Up (Would you Stop the Rain?)/Fugue, Shock Me). Then it’s back to the crowd-pleasing classics, with Tourniquet, Isak and the signature singalong Take My Bones Away, which delight the moshing hordes. The set list also includes an encore of The Sweetest Curse, but they don’t actually get to play this because the show started late and the strict curfew is just two minutes away.
What’s really impressive here is just how much joy Baroness take in performing. Bassist Nick Jost tends to hang back a bit but is clearly having enormous fun, Baizley leaps up and down with wild abandon, and Gleason simply can’t wipe the grin off her face. This certainly proves infectious. When Baizley informs us that the only way we’re going to heat this freezing venue is by expending an enormous amount of energy, everybody in the cavernous room joins in.
All pix by Mike Evans
Read more: Metal & Prog Picks: November 2024
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