I'm posting this record review here, 'cause WordPress is giving me an outrageously tough time on my real music blog, downPick, and I want to get this posted!

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Boris is dead.


The band that filled their stage with far too many full-stacks of amplifiers for the modest number of members; the band that liked to sit on one fat hairy note until their audience passed out from blissful exhaustion; the band that played heavy rock and roll--that band is no more.


The Japanese psych-punk-drone-hair-metal band Boris, while accustomed to reinventing themselves with each of their prolific releases, have put out New Album, a new album like nothing they’ve ever done before: It actually sounds Japanese.

But also electro. And also pop. And also punk. Much of could seemingly be the soundtrack to Mega Man X.


If Japanese bands have always had the penchant for soaring, sugary music, Boris has always bucked that cliche by playing a sort of dirty punk drone, which was rich in Orange and green texture, and massive, deep bass washes, which were brutal in their simplicity, and complex in their improvisational nature. Their live shows showed off their varying degrees; from fast and frenetic, to long and harrowing.


But on this new album, New Album, Boris shows a side of the band that they’ve only hinted at, in their occasional hammy live antics (particularly drummer Takeshi), or perhaps in their active denial of their proximal, if not musical, peers.

The album opens with an analog siren, perhaps a warning of what’s to follow: a Mars-Volta like galloped, arpeggiated intensity that launches into a J-Pop inspired frenetic heaviness that is the complete antithesis of what, at least Americans know as Boris. Pink, this is not.

The ride lasts, but never sounds influenced by anything you’ve known the band as before. It’s more Sleigh Bells than sunn0))), more electro than Akuma No Uta. From grimey UK-style beats, to driving, flying strings, reminiscant of Airship scenes from classic Final Fantasy games, with a healthy slathering of processed vocals for good measure. I’m sure this sounds unnerving to the long time fan, but know this: it’s done extremely well.

The record is always a ride; it holds the attention, and throws so many interesting sounds and textures your way that you just can’t turn it off. There is almost nothing here from the old Boris at all, but if you dissolve your expectations, throw away your reservations and just enjoy the ride, then Boris have a hell of an exciting trip to take you on. That said, I’m not sure there are that many bearded Boris aficionados with the moxie to let it all go, though they seem to have planned it thusly; New Album is only planned for release in Japan.

In fact, to put it as offensively as I can, if you thought the aftershocks from last weeks earthquake resonated hard, I predict that the outpouring of seismic energy coming from the international metal-hipster community when New Album drops will be mastodonic. This record is simply not aimed whatsoever at the demographic of Pink-aficionados, those that discovered the band through their Southern Lord pedigrees.

This album will be the go-to choice of those who did not discover Boris from the underground channels, but through the words of mouth, or the plugged-in automated recommendations of the digital era. This could be the band's rocket into the big time, propelling them far past their contemporaries, who were never as contemporary as Boris has always been, and still are.

Long live Boris.

My life, this one, is in a constant state of tribalistic, but normalistic flux. My own interpretation of my immediate is, while completely subjective in understanding, an understandably reactionary impulsive model, which I deem accurate and trustworthy, but which in essence is absolutely false in structure, being, and actuality.

It is the influenciers, the experiential happenstance, or the interpretations of actions from the you that defines it, that creates the interpretator of the first person self that we all share.

This rambling, not-to-be-read entry arrives by way of the Fat Tuesday celebration of the NOLA world. whodat.