Set In Stone With JOHN BAIZLEY From BARONESS

Interview by Kris Peters
US metal outfit Baroness perfectly encapsulate the notion of the
more things change, the more they stay the same.
Approaching their sixth album Stone - which is due out on September
15 - Baroness have managed to maintain a trademark sound while at
the same time delivering something fresh and original with every
release. They have a sound identifiably their own but allow
themselves enough scope for adventure to avoid alienating longtime
fans while still satiating their own desire to evolve
musically.
It is a fine balancing act, but one which Baroness have mastered
beautifully, crafting a reliable vulnerability that forms the DNA
of every album.
Frontman John Baizley joined HEAVY to talk more about that growth
on Stone.
"I'm feeling very, very, very ready to release it," he smiled.
"We've had this record in the bag for a while. This is potentially
the first record we have on my label that I would have spent the
adequate time preparing and marketing and promoting and
distributing for. The past couple of records have either been
rushed or I don't know what I'm doing well enough to understand
timelines and schedules. So this time we really decided to take our
time and release it as well as we could, but it's been
excruciating. I just want everybody to hear what you and I are
talking about. I just want somebody to hear it."
We ask him to explain Stone in greater detail musically.
"This was… I've gone from hate to love on this record over the
course of the nearly three years that it would have been in the
works," he measured. "In 2020 we had just released Gold & Grey,
our last record, and we had been on tour in Europe all through late
2019 and coming back in 2020 we were excited about putting together
the actual tour for that record. Which was going to start with a
trip to Australia and Japan. We were four days away from flying out
of the country when the lockdown occurred. Even up to four days
before lockdown I still thought we were gonna do it. It was really
like having the rug pulled out from underneath you. What followed
were several months of extreme confusion and frustration, everybody
can identify with that. But what we decided to do mid 2020 was
start writing a new record. We planned on how to make it as the
global situation developed. What became apparent to us was that we
were in for the long haul, so our idea - which incidently was an
idea we've had for many years and finally felt like the right time
to do it - was to rent an Airbnb cabin in the woods. My rhythm
section is in New York, and I'm in Philadelphia, so we chose a spot
that was as distant and into the bush as we could but was
equidistant from both Philadelphia and New York, so it was roughly
two and a half hours up into the country. We found a cabin, but it
was more like a big house that had a huge ceiling and tonnes of
space and not a tonne of walls, and it had a great sound for
tracking. So we rented the place for a month. For 15 years I have
been on classifieds and E-Bay buying studio equipment, and we built
our own studio in about 36 hours in a house that was not equipped
to be a studio but had all the acoustic plusses that we wanted. It
was big, and it was a good creative space for us and there was no
distractions, no businesses nearby. The nearest grocery was an hour
away. No bars, no businesses, nothing. We dedicated ourselves for
that month to write and record a record simultaneously. In the
course of that month there were only ever four people involved. We
had no assistance, no technicians. We had only ourselves and our
bullshit ingenuity to get us through the record and I think because
of that we were able to dive into some musical territory that was
really exciting and compelling for us and a situation I've always
wanted to be in where you're just always working and having ideas.
And recording and rehearsing 12 to 14 hours a day and really
developing a strong musical bond. Whenever we were nearly finished
writing we would record to get that early anxious energy into the
songs where we hadn't worked everything out. We improvised a lot on
the record. There's a tonne of unscripted, unknown things that we
captured on tape and ended up turning into songs. It was a pretty
exciting thing."
In the full interview, John talks more about the writing process,
how the environment contributed to the finished product, the
opening acoustic track Embers and the thought process behind having
it first up, musical direction and growth, touring plans and
more.