Noise Floor: Favorite Album From My Favorite Artist – Gold and Grey

December 4th, 2025

– Silver Kosmos

Noise Floor

Noise Floor is a monthly blog post for 88.7 the pulse, where I look into my favorite alternative albums and write about what makes me love them! Feel free to recommend your own directly to me at NoiseFloor4@gmail.com and you might just see your favorite get the attention it deserves.

Album Overview

The album for this December is Gold and Grey, by Baroness. Baroness is my favorite band, and this is my favorite album from them! Baroness is a band of many genres, and this one is the most experimental and varied album on their discography. I believe it’s a turning point in their discography and set the tone for the following albums. While their earlier albums included lots of sludge metal, Gold and Grey was the first to incorporate experimental and prog influences to the whole album, and an almost ambient flavor to the transitions between tracks, and smaller “transition songs”. I will touch on transition songs later as they sound so different from the longer tracks. Despite the metal genre it comes from, most of the vocals are really clean in this album specifically, only screaming in the most intense moments of the album.

It’s 6 years old, having come out in June of 2019, and runs for 1 hour, almost on the dot. While I cannot find a credible source for overall commercial performance or total sales, it peaked #39 on the billboard top 200 and had decent placement on other charts. Baroness has beautiful album artworks, created by the frontman John Dyer Baizley; Gold and Grey won best album artwork for the 2020 Heavy Music Awards!

As for the lyrics of the album, I find it to follow themes of persistence and change, as two harmonious opposites and constants. It also follows a more tangible theme of seasons, to represent these 2 abstract themes. Namedrops of various songs are very common in this album, making it sound more connected, and in my opinion, add a little humor.

A Perfect Introduction | Front Towards Enemy

This song starts off the album, and takes that role perfectly. It has a few seconds of some very quiet vocals and a subtle organ like synth, before instantly dropping you into the riff. The riff is initially hard to follow with its odd timing, but you can feel it after it plays a few times throughout the song. The song’s fast tempo and odd rhythm make it feel like it’s going forwards, which compliments the lyrics; It talks about how no matter what, there will be opposition, but you just have to face it head on and survive. “We’re headed for disaster, but I won’t close my eyes until it’s over”. The song has almost no repeat sections, excluding the refrains that cap both ends of the song. There’s almost nothing to latch onto musically, but it keeps you captivated and alert the entire song, until the final resolution. This is one of the first baroness songs I ever heard, and is exactly what hooked me to the band. The incredible dynamics provided in only 1 song makes it impossible to get tired of.

But We Survive | Seasons

Seasons is a statement. With a wandering verse full of questions, before a fast, simple chorus that takes up the majority of the lyrics. “We fall, we rise, we bend, we break, we burn, but we survive”. Do I even need to explain the album anymore? Seasons is the thesis, strips away all the fancy stories and big words and just says that we survive despite pain and opposition.

Back to the musicality, I find this song’s bridge and following chorus exceptionally beautiful. It’s a complicated fast guitar solo before it and the drums slow down, including some triplet action, fading into a half time breakdown. Full of sounds and instruments all around on both sides and varying pitches, until a sudden halt.

Personal Favorite | Tourniquet

Tourniquet is my favorite on the album. It starts with a long acoustic part, sung by the harmony vocalist, Gina Gleason. Despite the painful lyrics, the chords and the lead guitar are so comforting. This tonal dissonance between the words and the instruments makes it so much more interesting to me. The lyrics talk of loneliness and helplessness to fix something they caused unto themselves. That tied with the comforting instrumentation implies acceptance. “It bleeds but I’m already gone”. The midsection of the album is full of cries for external help, tourniquet being the first to set this trend. This may seem like it contradicts with the theme of persistence I suggested earlier, but instead I believe it just opens another perspective of the theme, one where community is needed in order to thrive.

Discomfort | Emmett – Radiating Light

The guitar part that plays for most of this song just makes you feel uncomfortable. And that’s exactly what the song is about, not belonging. “When I go out, will you find me? Where I’m supposed to be is no longer a place for me”. As the guitar goes away and is replaced with piano and bells, the discomfort also fades and is replaced with the opposite. At the same time the lyrics change from where they don’t belong, to where they are accepted. “If I walk in, will you find me? Is where I want to be”. This album is good at using musical tone and lyrical tone together to influence how you feel.

Return | Cold-Blooded Angels

Cold blooded angels is the song to take the album out of the slow pit of I’d do anything and Emmett – Radiating Light. It does it subtlety, being still pretty calm at the start of the album, even with a consistent beat. The song slowly builds up and up to the energy the album started with, but more confident and less alert. The fast and frantic guitar parts and odd timing of the early songs are replaced with much more stable rhythms and chords.

Resolution | Broken Halo

The proudest song on the album is definitely Broken Halo. It’s full of name drops, including the album name in the chorus. And the melodies and chord progression is so stable. It’s almost sickeningly resolute despite not being the last song. It’s directed to the 2nd person, as a promise of safety. “Let me hold your softened soul in place, where the wave will never break, Let me hold your broken halo, where the sunlight never shines”. This song just puts a smile on your face you can’t take off especially after the pain so few songs ago.

Rewind and Review

I love how dynamic this album is. Gold and Grey is a rollercoaster. With climbs, stops, and falls every other song. Even with lyrical and musical tonality it starts with a very frantic energy, with a mournful pit in the middle, and very confident and comfortable songs at the end. It’s a very cohesive album and flows very well between songs which tells a beautiful story of survival. I have it on vinyl and is my most played physical album, because it was absolutely made to be played as one cohesive piece.

Wild Card(s) | Transition Songs

For Gold and Grey’s wild card it can’t be narrowed down to just 1. It’s going to the unsung heroes of album listening, transition songs. There are so many short transition songs on Gold and Grey; They don’t stand out too much on their own, and I probably wouldn’t put half of them in shuffled playlists. However they are the secret ingredient that makes listening to Gold and Grey all the way through so rewarding.

Sevens picks up from the cacophony of seasons, and just puts some simple arpeggios on either side of your head, giving some breathing room before tourniquet.

Anchors Lament flows so smoothly I almost never notice when tourniquet ends and Anchors Lament starts. It’s composed of a simple piano part, string part, and vocals saying “Throw me an anchor”, which is the title of the next song.

Blankets of Ash is placed between I’d do anything and Emmett – Radiating Light. Two very calm, minimal songs. Blankets of ash builds just a little tension between them. It’s really hard to look at on its own, half the track being just noise, but when listening through the album as one, it sounds completely natural.

Crooked Mile sounds funny. It sounds constantly out of tune with itself and is really dissonant, but also playful. I don’t understand it as much as other transition songs, nor does it really glue Cold-Blooded Angels and Broken Halo; I believe it does the opposite. It intentionally provides room between the two tracks to make each one hit harder. It’s the shortest track on the album at only 40 seconds.

Can Oscura is 2 minutes long, hard to call a transition song, but when its adjacent songs are 4 minutes and 6 minutes respectively, anything goes. Unlike main songs it doesn’t really have multiple sections and is just a constant build up, so it belongs. I love the synth soundscapes behind the drums and lead.

Assault on East Falls is really strange. Weird synth sounds for 2 minutes, what’s it doing on my metal album? I say it once again provides some breathing room between tracks, letting each one really sink into you before the next one starts. It’s the weakest of the group in my opinion, but with a staggering 17 songs on the album, it’s hard to love them all equally.

I believe these weird experimental tracks provide space between main tracks so you don’t get numb to the genre and so each gets more time in your mind. Something I feel is needed by many other metal albums.

Ribbon Bow

That’s all for the month! Check back in on January 4th for the next issue. If you leave a recommendation at NoiseFloor4@gmail.com it might just be an album you love! Have an amazing December and a perfect Holiday season.