Hard rock quartet Baroness started to stray from its sludgy Southern metal roots as early as its third album, 2012’s decidedly ambitious double-length Yellow & Green. But even longtime fans already aware of the band’s eclectic inclinations can expect to be wowed anew by the sprawling range of latest effort Gold & Grey, due June 14 via Abraxan Hymns.

The second album since a highly publicized 2012 bus accident in England where all the passengers amazingly survived, despite brutal injuries -- the vehicle broke through a guardrail and plunged 30 feet to the ground -- Gold & Grey is also the second to feature the rhythm section of bassist Nick Jost and Trans Am drummer Sebastian Thomson. In addition, it's the second to be helmed by producer Dave Fridmann -- no stranger to epic-but-accessible rock albums in his own right, via his work with The Flaming Lips.

Unlike how the band put together the album's more straightforward predecessor, 2015’s Purple, Baroness started out with no clear sense of direction for Gold & Grey, and embraced what bandleader John Baizley refers to as “a healthy amount of confusion.” Lead guitarist Gina Gleason’s recording debut with the band on Gold & Grey further infuses the music with new dimension, thanks to her fluid, virtuosic leads and luminous harmonies.

Baizley spoke to Billboard about the long and often arduous path it took to get to this point.

When you revealed your painting for the new album’s cover art on Instagram, you said that it’s a very personal piece that reflects the last 12 years. How so?

That was mostly a reference to the amount of time that we’ve been releasing full-lengths. We started with the color theme for our albums on a lark, kind of as a joke, in 2007. When we did [the first Baroness full-length] Red Album, we said, “How hilarious will it be when we get to the end of this color sequence? How great will our merch table look? There’ll be a rainbow, with the three primary colors and the three secondary colors.”

Using gold for Gold & Grey was just a side step in calling it “orange,” so we’ve finished this chromatic album series. The band that first did that started it thinking, “It’s a hilarious idea because we’ll never record that many records. There’s no way our band will last that long.” So there’s been some sort of seismic shift or eon change that we won’t be able to articulate or talk about until like five years from now.

Visually speaking, I tried to include a bit of the band’s history while sticking to the same approach I’ve used for all of our record covers, which is to tell a personal story in a way that’s somewhat mysterious and might upend some people’s expectations. It’s about being a little bit subversive but also adding some amount of superficial beauty.

You have done artwork for several bands -- Metallica, Kvelertak, Black Tusk, Pig Destroyer. What else do you have in the works for that part of your career?

Right now, I have nothing, because this record has been such a monumental undertaking. I cleared out my schedule. When this tour concludes, I’ll have a little bit of time on my hands to reconsider and figure out what direction to go in. For the past few years, I’ve kept my work on the personal side of things. I got tired of feeling like I’m constantly part of a commercial enterprise that’s maybe there to sell a package more frequently than I wanted. I don’t actually believe that, but I felt myself getting close to that point, so I stopped. If I’m going to re-engage and work on these collaborative projects from here on out, now I’ve got a fresh energy and a new skill set.

It would be really easy to paint myself into a corner doing the same thing over and over again. Artists have to function in a world where it’s about production deadlines and what’s acceptable to use in advertising and marketing. One of the things I’ve had the most pleasure doing in my years in the industry is questioning those universal truths. When somebody says to me, “Well, that’s just the way it is,” that’s all the more reason for me to go, “Why?”

You were talking about working on this new album as early as 2017. How many sessions did you do at Dave Fridmann’s Tarbox Road Studios?

We did three sessions, which is exactly what we did with Purple — maybe a bit more, because Gina and I did quite a bit of guitar and vocal tracking at my home studio — but it was just a more complicated, convoluted process.

Gold & Grey is Gina Gleason’s recording debut with the band. You met her because she ordered from your pedal company, Philly Fuzz, and you realized she lived 2 miles down the road. Her leads and vocal harmonies really stand out. What does she bring to the band’s overall chemistry?

Just as Seb and Nick did on the record prior to this; just as [longtime lead guitarist] Pete [Adams] did when our second guitar player, Brian [Blickle], left; and just as Brian brought when our first guitar player, Tim [Loose], left, Gina’s brought a fresh energy. I don’t know how the band could have self-generated that freshness had we stuck to one lineup. I don’t see that as being possible. This was just a nice gust of fresh wind in my sails.

Technically, there’s a ton there with Gina. She brought a huge amount of technical capability and musical know-how with her. Most importantly, she was able to join the band and add her positive and pleasant attitude to our already weird mix of people, and it just felt seamless and easy. In this business, when something feels seamless and easy, you’d better fucking run with it. It was a real treat to look around at rehearsals and go, “My God, the caliber of musicians that I play with right now is kind of stupefying.” They’re all more technically accomplished than I am.

Pete Adams is a childhood friend of yours, and he left the band amicably --

Insane, right?

How important has that relationship been to you and the band?

Pete and I discovered music at the same time. We were kids growing up in a county that didn’t seem to want to accept the things we were interested in. It’s the country in southwestern Virginia -- if you didn’t listen to country music or the Grateful Dead, that was enough to be an outcast already. As angsty teenagers, we found calm in our lives through music. He and I will always have a special bond in that regard. So it was really important to me when he left the band, just like when [founding drummer] Allen [Blickle] left the band, that I not lose a friend over it. I just saw Allen last week. We hung out, and everything's great.

Not to belabor the accident --

I don’t care. I talk about it all the time.

-- but when Allen and bassist Matt Maggioni had to leave for health reasons, where did that leave them as far as financial resources for their recovery?

We were all screwed. I’ll just put it that way. None of us had the means or wherewithal to do anything other than what was directly in front of us in terms of recovery. It was not an optimal situation for anybody involved. I’d like to say that we did the best job that we could. I hope that anybody you’d ask would agree.

When Allen and Matt left the band, no one was sore about it. As a rock band, it’s nearly impossible to provide full health benefits for everybody. I really tried to take care of everybody who was on that bus, including our crew. There was also a big, long court case. I can’t overstate just how bad the situation was for everybody. Everybody involved operated with the utmost dignity and poise, and it was really inspiring to me. We could’ve all hated each other.