You can’t walk through Camden nowadays without some shady dude offering you drugs on the street. You should never, ever take him up on it, but the good news is that tonight you won’t have any need to. That’s because, just 10 minutes up the road in Kentish Town, three mind-expanding rock bands have gathered to take you on the most psychedelic trip you’ll ever have sober.
Burdened with a 7:15 start time, PALLBEARER don’t get half the turnout that their doom metal majesty deserves. Whether the thin crowd has soured the Arkansas troupe’s mood is impossible to tell, however: they’ve sounded sad as fuck for 12 years now. Tonight’s set pulls heavily from this year’s Mind Burns Alive album, its vast, immersive songs stilling everyone in emotion and awe. Only finale Worlds Apart, with its series of hulking riffs, offers glimpses of joy in what’s otherwise a labyrinth of sorrow.
Just in time, GRAVEYARD arrive with a pocket full of uppers. The psych-rockers get a now-fuller O2 Forum boogying fast, hopping between fizzy acid riffs and grooving Led Zeppelin callbacks. It’s a soundscape countless younger bands have tried, desperately pursuing the demographic of “grandads who think good music died around the same time as John Bonham”, but these Swedes present it without cynicism. With the thrashy From A Hole In The Wall and the fiercely technical drums of Ain’t Fit To Live Here, they straddle the fence between nostalgic and refreshing.
On 2023’s Stone, BARONESS abandoned the colour-themed album titles they’d used their entire career. However, the Savannah sludge/prog explorers rock up to their first London headliner in eight years looking more vibrant than ever. They bathe in technicolour spotlights as they burst into Last Word, which declares the band’s M.O. of revelling in contrast. Hammer-headed riffs give way to wobbling interludes. Frontman John Dyer Baizley’s Southern bark is underlined by guitarist Gina Gleason’s silken backing vocals. And prog drums scramble beneath the intensely listenable pop-metal chorus.
The grandeur’s initially, annoyingly short-lived. Baizley’s microphone overdoses on the mind-melting maximalism and packs in, leaving the band to improvise an instrumental and then just twiddle their thumbs for a bit. Thankfully, when the show kicks off again, it does so with gusto: galloping favourite March To The Sea gets the masses jumping and singing in a heartbeat.
The evening reaches its apex with a mini-tour through 2015 opus Purple. Woozy ballad If I Have To Wake Up (Would You Stop The Rain?) proves even more moving now that Gleason’s joining Baizley at the mic, their voices intertwining to strengthen the bittersweetness. In typical Baroness fashion, that quietness gets juxtaposed against the irrepressible energy of Shock Me. That hardy riff, that unforgettable chorus, that thundering bassline – it’s easy to hear how this anthem earned a surprise Grammy nod in 2017.
By the time Isak and Take My Bones Away end the night with its two most victorious singalongs, the fleeting troubles (the tech issues and the venue’s early emptiness) are long since forgotten. Baroness, Graveyard and Pallbearer have lifted London to new planes of intoxicating sound. No way can any weirdo Camden drug dealer offer you better than that.
Baroness setlist: O2 Forum Kentish Town, London – November 20, 2024
Last Word
March To The Sea
Beneath The Rose
Green Theme
If I Have To Wake Up (Would You Stop The Rain?)
Fugue
Shock Me
Swollen And Halo
Isak
Take My Bones Away
