Baroness / Coliseum at the Granada

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Last night, Georgia’s Baroness played Lawrence’s Granada Theater, with openers Coliseum. It was the first tour for the Savannah metal quartet since their April 2012 bus crash in England, as well as the departure of drummer Allen Blickle and bassist Matt Maggioni in March of this year.

The band was triumphant onstage, and despite the fact that Baroness is from the south, the show might as well have been a hometown return for these guys. The audience greeted every step by Peter Adams to the front of the stage and the attendant solos like they were missives from on high.

Not being completely familiar with the band’s discography leaves me a little at a loss to tell you what songs they played, but it seemed like it was one epic performance. The songs were strung together with transitional instrumentals that would build, exploding each time into the next time. If ever there were something to make a concert into a performance, this was it. It was entrancing.


Coliseum is one of those bands I’ve been meaning to see for ages. I’m very very glad I did. The played a selection of songs which covered their entire decade of history, going back to Goddamage, but focusing on their recent release, Sister Faith. Ryan Patterson spoke from the heart between songs, speaking to the injuries and loss felt by Baroness on the road, and how that’s the greatest fear you have traveling as a band.

The band refers to themselves as punks and while “Black Magic Punks,” off the new album, might be about the folks who’ve come before them, it could just as easily apply to Coliseum. It’s a dark music they play, but one that offers up hope and energy. “Waiting,” from the Parasites EP, might’ve been the highlight of the show for me — packed with riffs, and a vocal delivery that blew me away.

Bonus points to Patterson for introducing Sister Faith‘s “Love Under Will” thusly: “This is a song about finding love in the face of death.”