L-R: Sebastian Thompson, John Dyer Baizley, Gina Gleason, and Nick Jost
Baroness is a heavy metal band from Savannah, Georgia. Their genre switches around a bit, but they mainly tend to be Progressive Metal, stoner rock, and (mainly on early releases) sludge metal with alternative leanings from Yellow & Green onwards. The band was a Revolving Door Band for much of its existence, but the lineup has been mostly stable since 2013, save for Gina Gleason replacing Peter Adams on lead guitar in 2017. The band's only constant member is frontman John Dyer Baizley, who also does artwork for the band and has done artwork for several other bands as well.
Studio discography:
- First (EP; 2004)
- Second (EP; 2005)
- A Grey Sigh in a Flower Husk (split album with Unpersons; 2007)
- Red Album (2007)
- Blue Record (2009)
- Yellow & Green (2012)
- Purple (2015)
- Gold & Grey (2019)
- Stone (2023)
Members:
Current Members- John Dyer Baizley - Lead vocals, rhythm guitar (2003-present)
- Gina Gleason - Lead guitar, backing vocals (2017-present)
- Nick Jost - Bass, backing vocals (2013-present)
- Sebastian Thompson - Drums (2013-present)
- Tim Loose – Lead guitar (2003–2005)
- Brian Blickle – Lead guitar (2005–2008)
- Summer Welch – Bass (2003–2011)
- Matt Maggioni – Bass (2012–2013)
- Allen Blickle – Drums (2003–2013)
- Peter Adams – Lead guitar, backing vocals (2008–2017)
I can't forget the taste of my own tropes:
- Amazonian Beauty: Baizley loves painting naked, muscular women in wilderness settings on album covers.
- Anaphora: The end of "Mtns. (The Crown & Anchor)""We will never sleep
We will never wake
We will drift away" - Breaking Old Trends: Stone breaks with the color-themed Idiosyncratic Episode Naming of previous albums and is also their first full length not to have any Instrumentals.
- Chronological Album Title: The First and Second extended plays.
- Drugs Are Bad: "March to the Sea" is about losing a friend to drugs.
- Early-Installment Weirdness:
- The early extended plays use Harsh Vocals that the band was starting to move away from around the time of Red Album.
- Red Album itself is largely instrumental. Subsequent albums feature vocals more prominently.
- Epic Instrumental Opener:
- Red Album starts with "Rays On Pinion", which has its vocals come in around 3:46.
- The two halves of the Yellow & Green double album each have an instrumental track at the beginning.
- Hidden Track: Red Album has an unlisted, untitled track of twelve minutes of mostly silence. The last minute is a country-ish reprise of the "Grad" riff.
- I Am the Band: John Dyer Baizley is the only original member left.
- Idiosyncratic Cover Art:
- The first two EPs and split had mirror images of faces.
- The full albums have naked Amazonian women on their covers, which are textless.
- Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: The first five full albums have a color theme. This was retired after Gold & Grey.
- Lighter and Softer: The metal elements are toned down from Yellow & Green onwards.
- Limited Lyrics Song:
- Most of the vocal songs on Red Album only have a handful of lines.
- Vocals are more prominent on subsequent albums, but some songs are still minimal on lyrics. For example, "Back Where I Belong" has its verses share the same second half; the latter two of the remaining three stanzas are the same, and the former shares the same last line.
- Longest Song Goes First: "Rays on Pinion" (7:35) opens Red Album.
- Longest Song Goes Last: Downplayed on Yellow & Green, a double album. "Eula" (6:47) is the longest on disc 1 and the album. Disc 2 has a "longest then outro" variant with "The Line Between" (5:02) being followed by the instrumental "If I Forget Thee, Lowcountry" (2:42).
- Mesodiplosis: "A Horse Called Golgotha""Call the boy
He's down the hallow
Cull the tide
Distill the rye" - Revolving Door Band: The band went through several lineup changes in their first decade, most notably in 2013, when half the band members left after all of them were injured in a bus crash the previous year.
- Spoken Word in Music: "O'er Hell and Ride" reads like a poem.
- Textless Album Cover: Part of the Idiosyncratic Cover Art of their full albums is none of them having text.
