Pete Adams knows how to write a riff. Just listen to the first three Baroness albums. Or better yet, check out Valkyrie, the band the Virginian guitarist formed with his brother Jake. You might not be familiar with that band, and it’s understandable – it’s been seven years since they released an album. However, Shadows, the band’s first album on Relapse and third overall, is worth the wait. Along the lines of Deliverance-era Corrosion of Conformity, it’s riffy and melodic, as well as more straightforward than Baroness. In an interview with Noisey, Adams gave a Baroness update, explained the delay in between Valkyrie albums and spoke about playing with his brother.
Of course, the success of Baroness played a factor in the seven-year lapse, but that wasn’t it. Jake and his wife moved to Honduras to teach there, which also played a factor in it. And as for playing with his brother, Pete says it’s something that he thinks will keep happening, since they’ve been playing together since they were 10 years old. As for Baroness, at the time of the phone call, the record was about three weeks away from being completed. And he says that it’s a lot more uptempo than the experimental Yellow & Green:
Well, I will say this: Not to give too much away, but this record, it’s a rocker. We definitely did a lot of experimenting with Yellow and Green, and a lot of ideas that we wanted to just get out. We were on a writing streak that year, so we just absolutely were cranking out songs. We have a new rhythm section now, and it’s the first time we’ve written with the new rhythm section. So we had a little bit of a hump to get over. And once we did everyone was super excited. It’s a rockin’, uptempo record. I’m excited about it. We’re all pretty stoked.
Here’s “Golden Age” from Shadows, which will be out on May 19th and can be pre-ordered here.
