Baroness announce new album ‘Stone’

June 20, 2023 James Weaver

BARONESS have announced a new album!

Titled Stone, the upcoming album from the American metal band is the follow-up to 2019’s Gold & Grey, and is scheduled to be released in September this year, via Abraxan Hymns.

“An important through line in BARONESS is we don’t like to repeat ourselves,” vocalist/guitarist John Baizley explains. “It’s all about the willingness to take risks. When I was younger, the whole point of music was to be different, not to do the same thing, and not to listen to parents or play by the rules. That’s kind of goofy, but in practice, it works. It’s really sort of terrifying to be at the sixth record in your career and think that you’ll have to keep up with your history rather than continually invent. So, we doubled down on continuously inventing to see where it takes us. I think this record is a good reflection of that. Stone is a lot more alive, more direct.”

While they wrote the new album, Baizley recorded and pre-mixed it in real time, giving each song on Stone its own sonic treatment. After the group finished tracking drums, guitars, and bass, they took everything back to Baizley’s basement studio to record vocals before handing the album off to mix master Joe Barresi [KYUSS, TOOL] and mastering guru Bob Ludwig [LED ZEPPELIN, NIRVANA].

“The recording process was completely self-contained,” adds drummer Sebastian Thomsen. “Having just the four of us in a rented house in the mountains for a month resulted in not only a cohesive and authentic sound, but also an intense collective mentality.”

“I think we were able to strip everything away on this record,” guitarist Gina Gleason shares. “We were unified in that. So, we just jumped in and did our best. That felt really good. It was a really cool, empowering, creative experience.”

Alongside the announcement of the new album, the band have released a new music video for a new song lifted from the upcoming album; Last Word.

“I had been developing this process for video and animation, and this being our first self-produced album, we thought ‘why not extend that ethos to the video, too?’” Explains bassist Nick Jost. “It was really nerve racking to direct and create my first music video, but having a lifetime of nightmares and a love for strange animation turned out to be very useful.”

Watch the official music video for Last Word here: