### Baroness: First

#### 02/03/09 || theProphet

I like EP’s, many people don’t cause they feel like they got ripped off financially or whatever. But I didn’t pay for this, so if you stacked all my care together in a big pile that would amount to something similar to an ant heap, but an ant heap built by lazy fucking ants. Besides, if I had paid for it, I’d rather pay money for 20 good minutes than 15 good and 25 average. Rant with lame analogies over.

Baroness apparently wasted no creativity when naming their very first effort, which is this EP if you were wondering, and instead poured all that ingenuity and cleverness into the three songs themselves. This is some pretty sweet music, for sure. Reminiscent of Mastodon, a band which I personally have taken a much greater liking to as of late, but I think Baroness is superior to these elephant men in many ways. At least on “First”, though that may be due partially to the shorter album length, which automatically makes “First” less prone to contain filler songs.

As mentioned, the songs are all great here, and I’d even go so far as to say that every single second on this disc is at least good. The first song for instance, “Tower Falls” starts with one of the grooviest riffs I’d ever heard. The song title is very appropriate here, because as soon as this riff starts I immediately ejaculate which causes my dick to go flaccid again, or my “tower” to fall.

Pause for laughs.

And it continues in this grand fashion as “Coeur” kicks of with yet another great opening riff, this song also manages to contain the initial energy through the next two or three parts of the song somewhat better than “Tower Falls”. Then its a chorus and mayhem of course ensues. I say chorus, but that’s not necessarily true, because such conventional song structures are certainly not to be found on “First”. The songwriting is inventive and a tad progressive, blending many different genres and styles. The production is fine as well, we get served a somewhat rockish sound with crisp guitars and a rumbling bass. The drums sound awesome as do the vocals, a throaty roar somewhere between Mastodon and Vader.

“First” is simply a great EP filled to the brim with good music that is very well suited to the EP format. Sure, the songs are awesome, but I prefer this particular style in smaller doses, and something tells me that Baroness would be unable to maintain such a high quality for 50 minutes or so. Hopefully I will be proven wrong when I check out their full-length, though.

8 inventive album titles out of 10.

- Information
- Released: 2004
- Label: Hyperrealist Records
- Website: Baroness MySpace
- Band
- John Baizley: vocals, guitars
- Tim Loose: guitars
- Summer Welch: bass
- Allen Blickle: drums

- Tracklist
- 01. Tower Falls
- 02. Coeur
- 03. Rise