Purple, Joe

You knew this lede was coming, so feel free to roll your eyes preemptively—I am not a metalhead. Never was, never will be. I appreciate the genre for what it is, and that is... what exactly? Every metalhead I've ever met seemed a little nerdy/lame but in general well-meaning and genial. So, does that mean that metal exists as a genre for people who search for healthy outlets for their aggression, the headbanging and mosh-pitting and sore throats the next morning leaving in their wake an emotionally healthy human being?

Christ, alright, let's corral that line of thinking before this record review goes completely off the rails prior to the second paragraph. Backing up—I am not a metalhead. Why? My kneejerk reaction is to say that it's because of the voice-shredding vocals that pervade the genre, but I don't know if I can honestly make such a claim. Cookie Monster-style singing has never been a hard and fast roadblock for me—think about the indie-adjacent, great hardcore band Fucked Up, and how Damian Abraham's growl lends itself to the cinema of that band's music as opposed to detracting from it. I'm also thinking about some of my other favorite vocal performers—Frances Quinlan's smoker's whine, Matt Berninger in the '00s—and how they are a separate species from metal vocals but maybe the same genus.

Plus, that is a comically cliché to be lobbed at metal music these days. It's too easy of an insult. No one wants to be that guy. I don't, anyway.

But so here comes Baroness, their 2015 album Purple being the first quote unquote "metal" album that I've ever had a reason to listen to back-to-front a dozen times. My reluctance came from an assumption that this album was going to be impenetrably "screamy." I was shocked to learn that the vocals were not only far from Cookie Monster, but also extremely accessible.

Of its many flaws, this is the Record Club flaw that frustrates me the most—I am expected to pretend that I have any say in such matters as this, to present myself as someone who has any right to form any opinion about a piece of music for which I have no context and no personal history. If Puke on Your Birthday were a legitimate publication, we could just pay a friendly neighborhood metalhead to swing by and tell us why Baroness is important in the context of this storied and integral genre. Instead, you get me, spending 1000 words telling you what this album isn't, and then turning around and praying that Nate can give us a personal background story or Sunny can do his archaeological thing so this whole exercise doesn't completely fall apart.

I mean, I'm saying this as a guy who only just last week discovered Iron fucking Maiden, so take it with a grain of salt, but yo, this was pretty great. Yes, this most likely is due to the simple thrill of discovering something you thought was one thing is actually another thing. It's that uplifting invigoration of finally "getting it." Not all "metal" is actively "death metal." Some of it can just be metal. Some of it can just be about rocking out with loud guitars instead of using those guitars as an instrument of proverbial violence.

I don't know if mentioning Iron Maiden again would be useful to anyone, but for the first time in my life, I understood that bands like Iron Maiden, Led Zeppelin, and Black Sabbath really are at the head of the metal music lineage. This never made sense to me, how something like "The Lemon Song" could in any way be related to Napalm Death, Cradle of Filth, Eyehategod, and other very real band names that I could pull from the Wikipedia article. But with Baroness' Purple, I can finally connect the dots. I can see how this "stoner metal" came from Ozzy Osbourne and his ilk, and I can see how some people just went a lot further into the darkness.

I really do not know how to talk about Purple as an album, though. I am sincerely not qualified to do that. I'm not going to pretend that I know anything about this genre after listening to one fucking album; that might even be something akin to musical appropriation. So unless Baroness opens up whole new worlds for me (doubt it), we can leave it at these three thoughts

1. I was wrong to assume metal was a singular sound; it is varied, and there is something for everyone.

2. If you are steadfast in your belief that the more a frontman or frontwoman screams, the less likely you'll enjoy their music, then you might want to check your assumptions at the door.

3. Baroness kicks motherfucking ass.

GRADE: 3.5 pukes out of 5