Baroness
Bowery Ballroom
Friday, November 20

Baroness don't waste any fucking time. At precisely 11:37 p.m. on Friday night, the prog-thrash quartet stalked briskly onstage at the Bowery Ballroom in neat formation, wordlessly situated themselves, and without even a glance of acknowledgment towards the crowd, slipped into the minor-key, arpeggiated notes of "Bullhead's Psalm," the minute-and-a-half dry-run of atmospherics that opens their majestic new Blue Record. Then the highly choreographed skull-crushing began, exactly where it does on the album--with the jackhammering second track "The Sweetest Curse." In fact, the first three songs in Friday night's set consisted of the first three songs of The Blue Record played in succession. Baroness live, it turns out, have all the spontaneity of a tactical air strike.