Courtesy of Relapse Records

Baroness consists of Allen Blickle (from left), Summer Welch, John Baizley and Pete Adams.

ERIC BRADY The Roanoke Times

Pete Adams at Goshen Pass. Adams returned, wounded, from the Iraq war to recuperate at his Rockbridge County home before rejoining the metal band Baroness.

Courtesy of Relapse Records

The band's Pete Adams (from left), John Baizley, Allen Blickle and Summer Welch.

Baroness is the heavy-rock group of the moment.

The band was recently featured in Decibel magazine, which has listed Baroness' "Blue Record" (Relapse) as the best of 2009. Spin magazine featured the band this month in a story about the Savannah, Ga., sound. The Spin piece also praised "Blue Record" as possibly the year's best hard-rock disc.

But Baroness isn't simply a Savannah band. Back in the mid-1990s, Roanoke was its stomping ground, a place that offered a bit more than young guys from Lexington could find in their hometown. The band's singer/guitarists, John Baizley and Pete Adams, had both grown up in homes with fathers who played a lot of classic rock albums. As Baizley and Adams grew up, they wanted to find their own thing.

More than a decade later, they have, crafting a rhythmically and sonically diverse record that remains cohesive, with lyrics that are intentionally mysterious. A review in Pitchfork.com says the disc "feels like a marathon where everybody wins."

"Blue Record" debuted in October at No. 1 on Billboard's Heatseekers chart, and peaked at No. 117 on the Billboard top 200.

The band's touring schedule includes stops in Australia next year, where it will perform on the Soundwave Festival with acts such as Jane's Addiction and Faith No More.

Baizley said that he and Adams, the principal songwriters, weren't attempting to become critical darlings.

"We never, ever, in the 20-year history that he and I have been playing music, we've never had the discussion where we wanted to play music for profit and just do whatever's easy and sensible and guaranteed to keep us in the game, so to speak," Baizley said in a phone interview last month. "We've always, always gravitated toward the edges of the envelope, and from day one, really, it's always been a matter of experimentation and really just pushing ourselves into territories that are interesting for us, that kind of keep us engaged with the music.

"Because that's where we started, and ultimately that's where we're going to end up. It's all meant to be a progression."

There was one glitch in the progression. It involved Adams, who left the band's first incarnation in the late 1990s to join the Army. Adams would go on to serve in Iraq, where he lost the vision in his right eye in a grenade-launcher explosion. After his return, he joined Baroness and got back to doing what he and Baizley had been doing for years. Baizley said the reunion had an overwhelmingly positive effect on Baroness.

"The day that he joined the band, everything clicked a little bit more, and the glue that binds our band together became that [much] more solid, more unbreakable," Baizley said. "That was the first time in four or five years to play music and it was like, bam, bam, bam -- instant connection, instant progress."

Challenging, dangerous

Baizley, 31, and Adams, 27, grew up hanging around with a group of Rockbridge County youngsters that included their future drummer and bassist, Allen Blickle and Summer Welch. They found nothing much to interest them in Lexington.

"When we were young teenagers, we were kind of frothing at the mouths for something new, something a little bit more challenging and dangerous, you know," Adams said over the phone last month. "And of course, we found punk."

"The first thing we started doing, because it was closest, was go down to Roanoke and catch a show."

They took in punk and ska shows at now long-departed venues the Iroquois Club, the Melting Pot and Chili Peppers, getting into local acts such as Stations and the Jane Doz. They shopped at the now-defunct Safe as Milk Records, finding new discs by such national acts as Minor Threat, the Melvins, the Jesus Lizard and Fugazi.

Back in Lexington, they played music together, eventually teaming up with Blickle and Welch in a punk-metal band called Johnny Welfare and the Paychecks. That lineup would later become Baroness. Blickle's parents -- his mother, Mary Harvey, is a piano teacher -- let them play in their basement. The band threw shows there, "piling" the kids in, Adams remembered.

Drummer Steve West of the band Pavement had moved to Rockbridge County and built a home studio. The Johnny Welfare guys, who had been listening to a lot of Motorhead and Iron Maiden, started spending time there.

But Adams was a restless sort who had already dropped out of school at 17, moving to Richmond and back within a year -- "I just wanted to play more music, more music ... but I wasn't a city guy," he said. And he was about to move again. He joined the Army and was stationed in Savannah.

Coincidentally, Baizley moved there with his girlfriend, who was studying at Savannah College of Art and Design. They got out their acoustic guitars and went right back into writing, leaving behind their punk inclinations. It was strictly heavy metal music, with deep intricacies.

"In a strange way ... I've always called it a natural progression," Adams said. "It's like, you're a kid. You're angry. You're fueled up. You're starting to question the world, politics and everything else around you. And of course, authority just doesn't set right with you when you're that age. And so, punk fits that, perfectly.

"I think I got sick of playing power chords and three-chord songs. We all just wanted something more, something fresh."

Fresh for Adams and Baizley was a bunch of 10-minute long, melodic, thrash-metal songs with multiple sections and tempo changes. Blickle agreed to travel to Savannah to rehearse. Welch was finished with a college year abroad, during which he studied in Croatia and became immersed in black metal and death metal music, and he moved to town.

"It was like everybody was descending on Savannah, getting ready for what would become Baroness," Adams said.

But he wouldn't be around for it. He shipped off to Iraq.

Spearhead tip

Adams was a cavalry scout in the Army's 3rd Infantry Division, a gunner in his scout platoon. He was deployed with the 3rd to Kuwait months before the war began, and was on the front lines from the beginning, at the "very tip of the spearhead that went into Baghdad and throughout the southern and southwestern deserts."

On the Euphrates River, near Fallujah, he was involved in a firefight when he experienced a malfunction in his grenade launcher. While Adams tried to fix it, a grenade went off inside the gun.

"And that was that," he said.

But Adams was lucky. It would take multiple surgeries -- at a MASH unit in the southern desert, in Germany and at Walter Reed Army Medical Center -- before surgeons finally saved the right eye. Still, he would no longer be able to see from it.

"Next thing you know, I'm finally on the road back to Savannah, a year after the day I left for Kuwait," he said.

Baizley was ready to get Baroness on the road. Blickle and Welch were ready, too.

"Of course, that was the last thing on my mind at that time," Adams said. "I just needed to come home. I needed to get back to [Rockbridge] county and recuperate ... which was much needed, and that I did."

Recovery and reunion

The band wound up touring with a couple of different guitarists, including Blickle's brother, Brian Blickle, who was on board in 2007 for the band's first full album release, the critically lauded "Red Album" (Relapse). When Brian Blickle left in April 2008 to start another band, Baizley called Adams. He drove down from Rockbridge County -- he's the only band member who still lives here when not recording or touring. Adams and Baizley again went straight back to writing.

"Our spirit, our morale was high. Our creativity was increasing," Baizley said.

They began touring, then writing "Blue Record."

"I was reconnecting with all my old friends -- my oldest and dearest friends," Adams said. "And it was really something else, man."

It's a group of friends who share a number of things in common, Baizley said. It is uncompromising, with a solid work ethic and no willingness to consider itself a finished product. And most importantly, it is a group with a long history of friendships and family bonds that help it push through conflicts that might derail other bands, Baizley said.

And now it has the beginnings of international success. Both of the Relapse releases, which the band lists as companion projects, have topped Revolver's year-end albums list. And by the time Baroness comes off the road in March, it will have performed in at least nine countries on three other continents, including dates in London, Paris, Munich, Berlin, Sydney and Tokyo.

Baizley, an art school dropout who creates the band's fascinating CD covers, remains surprised by it all.

"I'm the sort of person who always sets myself up for a hard time or for failure at every turn," he said. "So I think every time I've read a positive review or seen some impressive [sales] figures or get this offer or that offer, it's always completely surprising to me.

"I think one of the things that really defines this band and has charted our growth ... is that we have never had the intention to move too fast. We want to earn everything. ... We started off small, playing primarily in basements and the diviest bars and the most out-of-the-way towns in the country, and we've never taken a huge step forward. It's always been one foot in front of the other.

"I think on a long-enough timeline, people recognize that and appreciate that. At least I would hope so."

On the Net: Stream all of "Blue Record" and see some of Baizley's artwork at myspace.com/yourbaroness.