Sometimes we'll headline an article regarding a member of a group making a few comments about an upcoming album or single as them talking about it, which is a pretty fair assessment. However, when I tell you that Baroness frontman and guitarist John Baizley talks about the new record they're working on, I mean the man straight up chews your ear off. It's all pertinent and interesting information, but holy hell is there a lot of it! You can absolutely read the whole statement below that he gave Steel For Brains in an interview, or you could read the patented (not actually) Metal Injection TL;DR Version! Because we love you like that. Baizley said, in many more words…
- Baroness is in what Baizley is deeming the "second half" of writing the new record. He doesn't give any expectations on when it'll be done, but he does say he'll do the artwork for it like he always does.
- There are demos of stuff floating around in the Baroness camp.
- He said meshing with the new members in the band post-accident is working out just fine. There is no bad blood between the band and the former members.
- The double album, being 2012's Yellow and Green, was an experiment and the band wants to do something more "manageable" for the fans this time around.
- Members of Mastodon will be on the new record in a large capacity.
I might've made up that last one, but I guess you'll just have to see for yourself in the super long, totally uncut director's edition of the quote (spoiler- I really did make it up)! Enjoy!
"We’re in the midst, and I think or I hope that we’re entering the second half of writing right now. I think we’re beginning to see a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel as far as that’s concerned. It’s kinda like at this point we’ve been off tour since February. That’s a very long time for me. I haven’t been off tour this long in nearly twelve years of playing music.
But I’ve got family and everything, so it’s nice to have a break from touring. We definitely wanna get back out and do the things that we’re good at: travel and adventure, meet new people, play more shows, go places we haven’t been before.
As you and probably everyone else know, we had to go through a pretty significant lineup change last year after the crash. They didn’t want to tour anymore, and that’s fine. No hard feelings and no love lost. I still love those guys. But changing 50% of your band is a pretty big deal, and we were unsure how that would play out, and it’s taken a little time just to let it sink in and become a well-oiled machine again.
We definitely had the lag thing immediately. It took very little time to get that. When it comes to writing, though, it took a little while to become comfortable and for everybody just to be able to understand what writing in Baroness is like and what the band is ultimately going towards.
Fortunately that’s already happened and now we’re just kind of kicking ass and writing. It’s hard to say any timeline. I don’t feel like I’m talking out of turn or giving away an secrets, but we’re definitely not doing another double record. We wanted to do it once.
We knew the idea was preposterous, and we knew that it was asking a lot from people, and that was such a focus the last time we wrote. Now we’re kind of on the opposite end of the spectrum. It’s very much more focused than the last record. I think it’d be interesting if Baroness put out a record that you didn’t need to put on two pieces of vinyl if you were to press it, so we’ll see if that can happen.
As of a couple of weeks ago I was listening to some of the rehearsals and demos we’ve done, and I’m super amped on where we are now. The fact that we’re still writing music, and the fact that it’s still got that intrinsic Baroness sound to it despite or in spite of what we’ve gone through – I’m super thrilled about that. As always it’ll be interesting to see what happens when the record comes out. We’re happy we still have an audience.
We’re happy we’re still alive. We wanna keep playing. Artistically speaking I’m just trying to find the time to make things happen. I’ve got a couple of things including one big solo show that I’ll be talking about in four or five months, and as always I’m doing the Baroness cover which traditionally takes hundreds and hundreds of hours, so I’m just gearing up for that. [Laughs]"
If you haven't done so already, definitely go back to the Steel For Brains interview and check out the rest of what Baizley has to say. There's a lot of really cool conversation in there regarding art and life in general!
If that's not enough John Baizley for you, you can also read our very thorough interview with him about his artwork from a few months back.
