Review: Baroness at The Orange Peel

A little more than halfway through Baroness’ Oct. 15 appearance at The Orange Peel, frontman John Dyer Baisley had a few words of praise for Asheville. Recalling way back in the early 2000s, when the Savannah-based group played at what was then Green Eggs and Jam on Lexington Avenue, Baisley talked about the halcyon days “when nobody gave a fuck about who we were, [and] we always had a home in Asheville.” Continuing above the responsive cheers, he told the appreciative crowd, “You taught us how to perform; you taught us about punk rock; you taught us how to treat people. When you find the community of music, when you find the people at work, you gotta hold onto it for everything it's worth.”

It was around that time — in the heady post-grunge, post-hardcore, post-metal, post-all-the-things early aughts — that a pretty great thing was happening to metal. And it was especially potent down there in Georgia, where metal bands were infusing punk rock energy and progressive artistic instrumentation into their mix. Vocals broke away from the high-tinged screeches of yore to find a way forward beyond the gut-crunching gravel of hardcore and death metal. Experimental sound explorations loosened the reins on song structure and allowed for journeys into uncharted realms.

In Atlanta, Mastodon made big stomping tracks that would lead them to the top of the heap and eventually earn them Grammys. But a few hundred miles to the southeast, beneath the coastal live oaks of Savannah, a scene was gestating in the garden of good and evil that would produce epochal sludge and metal bands, notably the trinity of Kylesa, Black Tusk, and Baroness.

Meanwhile, over here in the mountains, as Asheville’s metal and punk crowd grew — either by import or conversion — so did the number of venues, and the underground became less “under.” Green Eggs and Jam moved on and Static Age Records moved in (while continuing to put on pretty great shows of their own). Now, Mastodon plays Harrah’s Cherokee Center — Asheville when they come to town, while Black Tusk convenes, astoundingly, at The Odd. Kylesa disbanded in 2016 (though the door is always open if y’all are feeling a reunion tour). And on its first stop in Asheville since 2019, Baroness filled The Orange Peel with Asheville’s metal faithful.

And if we are to take Baisley’s words of praise at face value — that those bygone shows on Lexington taught his band how to perform — well then kudos to you, Asheville, because Baroness gave it their all that Sunday night with a lavish, loud, complex, and epic performance.

Emerging to sing the soft, melodic, convoking strains of “Embers” that opens its latest album, Stone, the band then launched into the towering “Last Word” and got quickly to the soaring, expanding, enveloping, mushrooming shockwave of sound it unfolded onto the venue.

“Last Word” was an apt introduction to what Baroness had lying in wait. Baisley, in all of his bearded, bald, six-foot-some-odd frame, held forth with a broad tenor big enough to fall into. He growled, but didn’t rattle. He howled, but didn’t screech. And the tone fit the world-building his lyrics undertook, as he sang about the end times, oblivion, and fusing with the setting sun. Baisley was at times imposing, at others unbridled — both a conjurer and beckoner, eyes wide, teeth bared, and he quite often marked his words with furious gesticulations, breaking away from the guitar to thrust an arm forward, forefinger pointed skyward like Socrates before the hemlock.

“Last Word” also gave the crowd the evening’s first solo from Gina Gleason, who joined the band as lead guitarist in 2017 and quickly sealed her place as one of metal’s predominant players. Clad in black jeans and black sleeveless shirt, Gleason tore into her riffs, one foot perched on the monitor, grinning out at the crowd, which responded with cheers and horns held high. There are those guitarists that impress the studied and those that blow the minds of the laymen, and Gleason is both.

But Baisley is a vicious force on guitar as well, and he and Gleason joined forces for several tandem guitar solos, a hallmark of the Baroness sound and plain engrossing to watch and hear live. True to its progressive genes, Baroness ventures on complex melodic and rhythmic changes in its music — the twists are never jagged enough to pop out of a groove, but they are thrilling and often unexpected — and Gleason and Baisley stuck the landing each and every time.

So, that gets us through the opening number. And as I said, “Last Word” was only the prelude to a 14-song show that visited the eras of Baroness’ timeline from the earlier, crunchy sludge of Red Album (2007) to the great big universes of Gold and Grey (2019) and Stone. And unless you knew all of these tracks by heart, the slipstream surprises Baroness pulled off were bound to blindside you with one “holy shit” moment after another. To listen to Baroness is to yield the wheel to a band that may take sudden turns you never knew were coming, or barrel down on a riff to see how far it goes.

Either way, it’s a fine and good time. “A Horse Called Gorgotha” (from 2009’s Blue Record) rocketed forth with opening licks that could have been born in ’70s hard rock, but then blew apart into a kind of punk rock victory anthem, galloping forth and unleashing guitar leads. Then, just as I got settled into that arrangement, bassist Nick Jost led the descent into an entirely new movement of the song. Likewise, “March to the Sea” (from 2012’s Yellow and Green) began with an almost medieval minstrel plucked guitar (“a sliver sweet refrain,” so sayeth Baisley in the opening verse) before launching into a chugging, persistent rhythm, more guitar duos from Baisley and Gleason, and a sky-high layered collage of sound that screamed triumph even as the lyrics lash out at the song’s villains — valium, morphine, and heroin.

“Beneath the Rose,” also from Stone, delivered break-neck math-rock deep-dive sludge as Baisley recited the verses in prose, the choruses in song, and the last parts in full howl while drummer Sebastian Thompson just pounded the kit into oblivion. Blue Record’s “War, Wisdom and Wine” charged right out of the gate, setting a true headbanging beat, and at that point, with the twin guitars at full speed and the rhythm section heavy as hell, the whole band just opened everything at full blast. Often, Gleason and Jost both joined with Baisley on lyrics to produce a vocal alliance that flat out bulldozed the room with its power.

It comes as no surprise that, alongside his metal musicianship, Baisley is also a painter (having designed not only album covers for Baroness, but also for Kylesa, Black Tusk, and others). The songs of Baroness are multilayered and meticulous. Art and thought have gone into every second, and even the spaces between songs are filled by ambient sounds and samples to weave a seamless and immersive show. And when he writes of languish, doom, or redemption, his compositions often feel like they are seated in the highly illustrative worlds of fantasy and sci-fi.

Case in point: “Magnolia,” a multi-faceted journey from Stone that wanders from clear and gentle passages to blasting peaks and thundering drums, stirring up visions like different parts of a mythical continent. That delivery, and Baisley’s lyrics (“Heavy weight/one more soul/Leaving flaming arrows”) has a tone fitting for a much-beloved and iconic era of fantasy that spiked in film in the ‘80s. Conan the Barbarian comes to mind, as does Dragonslayer, and “Magnolia” would land solidly over the end credits on a reboot of Ladyhawke (and I truly mean that in a good, good way).

“If I Have to Wake Up (Would You Stop the Rain)” from 2015’s Purple was a tragic and mournful near-orchestral ballad, held together by Jost’s rock-solid bass groove. And thematically, it felt like a cousin to Radiohead’s “Exit Music (for a Film)” from that band’s OK Computer. Some may take issue with comparing art metal and art rock (I apparently don’t), but you have to admit you can imagine the words “one last taste of milk and gasoline” coming out of Thom Yorke’s mouth.

Then there were the times where the band just got down to it. Where many songs traded in tension and release, “Under the Wheel” bore down with tension on top of tension, driving the same chunking guitar rhythm over and over like an unchecked alarm. And Thompson’s drums, already unrelenting throughout the entire show, just thundered with annihilation on “Shine.”

Closing the show with a two-song encore, the band showed no signs of wear and tear, with a crushing turn at Blue Record’s “The Sweetest Curse,” and wrapping with “Isak,” a return to their first record and those early days of Baroness where, as Baisley said “nobody gave a fuck” who they were. Raw and loud and sludgy as hell, the song was an instant crowd-pleaser, and left no doubt who Baroness was and is — a force of nature and holds its rightful place in the pantheon of metal.

(Photos by Jonny Leather)