There are several ways to cop tickets to Savannah, Georgia, metal band Baroness’s current tour, some more exciting than you’d expect. Sure, you could point and click your way through an online purchase, or pay to get in at the door, but if you’ve got a keen eye and a ton of love for your hometown, you may want to head over to the band’s Instagram account. Taking a cue from Willy Wonka, the quartet has been hiding special Baroness-brand chocolate bars at every tour stop, the wrappers of which also hold two concert tix.

In keeping with the title of the group’s 2015 full-length, Purple, the “golden tickets” they’ve been stashing near local landmarks and businesses have more of a mauve-ish hue. But while photo proof through the band’s various social-media accounts reveals that plenty of fans have found the goods, those in certain cities haven’t always been successful.

“One time, we did it in Italy and hid it behind a trash can that looked like an ice cream cone. It turns out there’s tens of thousands of them in that particular city,” guitarist-vocalist John Baizley tells the Straight from inside a Columbus, Ohio, concert spot just after finishing sound check. “Nobody found it, because the volume of that landmark was too spread out.”

While Baroness has spread out plenty of material over the last 10 years, 2012’s Yellow & Green being a double disc of drawn-out space rock, Purple finds the act more focused. In part, the clarity comes in the wake of a near deadly accident in 2012 in which the group’s bus careened over an English highway guardrail and plummeted 30 feet. The outfit was rushed to hospital for its multiple injuries, with Baizley’s badly broken limbs almost having to be amputated. While in recovery, he felt possessed to get Baroness back on track quickly, as best he could.

“I had to take my left arm and my left leg, both of which had atrophied down to bone and tendons, and build them back to normal. That was easy to a point, because it’s just putting in the man-hours and physical labour,” the frontman explains. “Mentally and creatively, it was a different thing. We got the wind knocked out of us, in every sense. Most immediately, we had half of our band leave.”

Drummer Allen Blickle and bassist Matt Maggioni departed in 2013, leaving Baizley and guitarist Pete Adams to find a new rhythm section. They ended up finding four-stringer Nick Jost and percussionist Sebastian Thomson, and things quickly jelled.

“When something so terrible happens to you and it’s followed by something good, you don’t ask any questions,” Baizley explains. “You just roll with it and let that be the truth. That has led us to this point, which I’m very grateful for.”

The current foursome’s Purple is both concise and adventurous. As in Baroness’s earliest days, tracks like “Morningstar” and “Desperation Burns” possess mammoth-heavy riffs that stand shoulder to shoulder with fellow Savannah crushers Mastodon. That said, Baizley has evolved from burly howling toward a sandpaper-rough yet melodic croon. Elsewhere, “Shock Me” bleeds out a trance-inducing wash of synths before bringing in the hard-rock licks and multilayered vocal harmonies.

Though the music comes across as poppy and positive, Baizley’s lyrics have him struggling with the rehabilitative process. Many songs allude to battles, with “Chlorine & Wine” finding an “uncomfortably numb” frontman pitted against a nurse armed with a scalpel and pain pills.

Baizley notes that Purple paints a particularly dark portrait of the last few years of his life, but diving deep into his art helped him reconcile and heal. Bringing the album to the masses every night on tour is making the process even easier.

“So many forms of escapism are wholly destructive to the human body and psyche,” he posits. “Music is something that allows for a dialogue between you and everybody. Whether it’s in a stadium with tens of thousands of people or a room with 10 people, there’s a connection that happens without the strict, prosaic, linear dialogue that you and I are having right now. There’s something elevated to it.”

Few could deny that Baizley’s crowd-uniting sentiment is even sweeter than the taste of a hidden Baroness chocolate bar.

Baroness plays the Commodore Ballroom on Sunday (May 29).