Baroness hit Purple patch on comeback

Baroness have issued a single and confirmed their fourth album will be out in December.

The single Chlorine & Wine has been issued alongside an animated video and the album, Purple, is due to appear on December 18 via the band’s own Abraxan Hymns label.

It is the band’s first new music since the 2012 bus crash that came a month after the release of last album Yellow & Green and which left nine people injured. In the wake of the accident, drummer Allen Blickle and bassist Matt Maggioni left and have been replaced by Sebastian Thomson and Nick Jost.

Frontman John Baizley says: “After releasing a lengthy and investigative record like Yellow & Green we all felt that we needed to make something much more direct and immediate.

“It was important for us to write our new songs with the type of enthusiasm and expressiveness that could act as a counterpoint to the album’s dark themes. As a result, the music came out in an intense, heavy and sonically captivating in a new way, which was important, loathe, as we are to fall into any kind of complacency pitfall or formulaic songwriting routine.

Purple is the most fully realised representation of our intention as a band. Considering the amount of physical and mental energy spent writing it, we have accomplished something which would have seemed impossible to us a couple of years ago.”

The band play this weekend’s Reading and Leeds festivals and a North American tour is set to be announced soon.

Purple tracklist

  1. Morningstar 2. Shock Me 3. Try To Disappear 4. Kerosene 5. Fugue 6. Chlorine & Wine 7. The Iron Bell 8. Desperation Burns 9. If I Have to Wake Up (Would You Stop the Rain) 10. Crossroads Of Infinity

Stef wrote close to 5,000 stories during his time as assistant online news editor and later as online news editor between 2014-2016. An accomplished reporter and journalist, Stef has written extensively for a number of UK newspapers and also played bass with UK rock favourites Logan. His favourite bands are Pixies and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. Stef left the world of rock'n'roll news behind when he moved to his beloved Canada in 2016, but he started on his next 5000 stories in 2022.