OK, they're called BONGRIPPER. The record is called Satan Worshipping Doom. The song titles, and there are four of them, are as follows: "Hail", "Satan", "Worship", "Doom". Both the front and back covers are adorned with eye popping Bosch-ian paintings of weird goat headed demons and naked ladies, and flames and birds, and strange plants, and lots of wrong heads on wrong bodies, and flames, and demons, and well, you get the drift.
So one guess as to what this sounds like.
Epic, monstrous, big riff slo-mo satanic sludge doom heaviness from these Midwestern miscreants. We've been fans for a while, having dug their first few hippie hating outings, Hippie Killer, and Hate Ashbury (which featured killer cover art of a big set of hedge clippers about to snip the fingers off a hand making the peace sign), but this is the first one we could get in enough numbers to review / list. Which is a shame, cuz these guys rule. But at least now, with Satan Worshipping Doom, the rest of the world can finally revel in the epic downtuned riffage and filthy crusty pummel of these doomlords. And the best part? NO VOCALS. Yep, all instrumental, so if you hate the sort of hysterical shrieking, or can't stand the howling bellow, or are annoyed by the cookie monster gurgle, well, you're in luck, cuz this is ALL RIFFS, and nothing but, sludgey, doomy, Sabbathy, a little bit of swing, a little stonery, lurching, and lumbering, staggering and stumbling, pounding and pummeling. But the band do mix it up, adding some cool minimal leads, that almost sound more like vocals than guitars, what sounds like synths here and there, even some electronics, the sound and songs super dynamic, slipping from all out assault, to swoonsome droned out dirge, to Sabbathy Swing, to full bore glacial crush, to epic ultra doom trudge, but somehow, even sans vocals, these guys manage to keep it interesting, the songs catchy as hell, heavy and hateful, doomy and moody and sometimes a little melodic, but always fucking crushing and heavy as hell.
You shouldn't even need a list, but just in case, this is totally essential for anyone who digs The Body, Cough, Thou, Electric Wizard, Bong, Sleep, Bongzilla, Cavity, Church Of Misery, Om, Dopethrone, Eternal Elysium, Los Natas, Reverend Bizarre, Ufomammut, and all that sort of stonery, Sabbathy, doomy, sludgey, riffy heaviness...
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Another blast of bong ripping Satan worshipping stoner sludge doom, from just one of our many favorite bong-bands (Bongzilla, Belzebong, etc.), and like Great Barrier Reefer and Satan Worshipping Doom before it, Bongripper once again, crank it up and smoke us out with a sprawling sidelong epic, that starts off surprisingly atmospheric, weird voices, sheets of undulating feedback, swirls of hiss and static, and electronic glitch, eventually joined by some super distorted bass buzz, and finally, after about three minutes, the 'Rippers unleash a churning juggernaut of downtuned riffery, and wild tribal drumming, which seems poised to explode into some sort of frenzied freakout, but instead, lumbers into full on doom creep, a tarpit trudge, that's laced with wild tangled of revved up mathiness, which at least at one point explodes into what sounds like a full on death/black metal blast. But fear not, 'cuz even then, the sound seems to melt and ooze into its original shape, a sludgey Sabbathy swing, and so it goes, the song unwinding in an instru-metal bongsmoke stupor, continuously seeming to battle between slow and low, fierce and frenzied, with the black hole gravity of the bands doom dirgery prevailing.
Bongripper are matched up here with Hate, who are the perfect balance for BR's serious sludge, with short sharp blasts of thrashing, grinding metallic power violence, frantic riffing, frenzied blasts, shrieked glass gargling vokills, some seriously bombastic punk-metal chaos, that over the course of close to eight minutes, dips into AmRep style noise rock, chugging old school metal mastery, tangled mathy almost tech metal freakouts, culminating in the 4 minute closer, that is a serious slab of ferocious dirge metal density, the guitars blown out and crumbling beneath the weight of all that distortion, the vokills sick and throat shredding, a definitely Today Is The Day vibe for sure, which has us really wanting to hear more more more from these guys!
Includes a digital download code as well!
Only the biggest stoners or hardiest AQ list readers will even make it to this review. Which is precisely the problem with Bongzilla. Unless you're a pot smoking college student, a stoned metal head, or just an all around dirtbag, Bongzilla is an unbelievably stupid band name. It's the sort of name that would have Beavis And Butthead giggling and saying things like "Um, huh huh, he said bongzilla, huh huh." But let's be honest, Bongzilla is the perfect name for these guys, stoned and druggy and enveloped in a swirl of pot smoke and day old bongwater, at the same time, a crushing, stomping, downtuned metal behemoth. Sludgy and monstrously dirgelike, but with plenty of stoner groove. We'd dare go so far as to say Bongzilla are one of the best stoner sludge bands around. In fact, they manage to take the sound of EYEHATEGOD and all that sort of nihilistic NOLA stoner doom, groovy hip shaking stoner pop, and all manner of drug metal, and mix it with a big old dose of acid drenched space doom a la Hawkwind or Monster Magnet. A crushing dirgelike stoner riff sort repeates over and over eventually sort of splintering apart into slow floating slabs of fuzz guitar, drifting all hazy and mesemerizng, a blown out outer space psych jam of monumental proportions. The 12+ minute "Stonesphere" is the ultimate Bongzilla trip, a groovy tarpit riff, that is eventually smeared into long loping streaks of drug addled space rock / krautrocky bliss out, complete with seventies style talk box vocals buried way down in the mix. So tough it out, make it past the dumb (but WAY appropriate) name, the cover art of a soldier smoking pot in front of an American flag with pot leaves instead of stars, and the goofy Amerijuanican album title, and prepare to sit back and drift off into a goloriously druggy oblivion. If Bongzilla were called Krakow or Ultrablackbuzzhole or Fuckcrush or Strangle Flanger or something appropriately brutal and perplexing, if they were Japanese, if they had songs about serial killers instead of smoking pot, if they had super spiffy retro graphic design, or released super limited picture discs and multiple versions of every record and managed to sell as many records on eBay as they did in stores, but sounded EXACTLY the same, you can bet the rest of the stoner / sludge / doom / drone elite (Corrupted, EYEHATEGOD, Green Machine, Boris, Church Of Misery, Yob, etc.) would be cowering in terror (or at least, watching their backs), and all those crazy stoner-doom-drone collector freaks would be slobbering up a storm!
The last official U.S. release from the now retired label/store Howling Bull America (who we will miss something awful and who leave a void in our dwindling little punk rock community that will undoubtedly be filled by more cellphones/S.U.V.s/restaurants). This is the latest e.p. from Michigan's reefer obsessed, downtuned stoners. Crushing and sloooow and heavy as fuck. Three new tracks (including the wonderfully titled "Grim Reefer") and four live cuts (only on the cd).
Bongzilla: the name says it all, doesn't it? Crushing, HEAVY sludge-metal with a massive pot fixation is what you'll find here. Now, sometimes releases in this genre (yes, it's a genre) are sooooo great, unexplicably transcendent, and weirdly compelling, that we'll recommend 'em to all and sundry (like Electric Wizard, Corrupted, Sleep, Boris). Bongzilla is perhaps too single-minded about the pot thing (and what passes for the musical thing too) to warrant such a general recommendation. But they do this sort of sludge metal quite well, and if you're already quite partial to the heavy stuff -- i.e. you've got some Grief, Sleep, Eyehategod, Bongzilla (duh) etc. in your record collection -- you'll probably want to check this out. Especially if you also smoke pot. The song titles alone provide ample stoner entertainment! I mean, "Keefmaster"? Musically, it's all about massive fat riff (rhymes with spliff) repetition, in a simple, slow, sub-Sabbath mode, littered with the usual sort of drug-related samples we've come to expect. Not a lot here for the attention-span impaired though, or maybe there is, depends on how you use it.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Hey you read Windy's Guardian column on stoner rock, right? Here's one of several exemplary examples, as it were. More weed fueled fury from these Midwestern ne'er do wells. Sludgey stoned thud rock with copious samples warning against the evil of drugs. Includes an awesome Sabbath cover ("Under The Sun").
What is it with stoner rock, and its seemingly unending appeal to those of us who don't smoke pot. Perhaps it musically induces a similar mindstate and headspace as getting totally blazed, but how the heck would we know. Yeah, it's heavy and brutal, downtuned and crushing, groovy and brutal, but there's something else going on in there, it's gotta be the pot! And if smoking pot DOES actually sound/feel like this, then we're totally kicking ourselves for abstaining for the last 30+ years.
If any one band truly embodies the sprit of stoner metal, it would have to be Bongzilla. C'mon, they're called BONGZILLA after all!! And while the name might have you thinking these guys are some kind of joke, this shit is deadly serious. These guys may love their weed, and sing about it incessantly, but they totally destroy, wielding their skull crushing stoner doom riffage like stoned cavemen atop prehistoric dragons, bong in one hand, bloodied axe in the other. Similar to how Japan's serial killer obsessed stoner rockers Church Of Misery lace their songs with news snippets and sound samples of all their favorite killers, Bongzilla tracks are packed with news and propaganda, radio broadcasts and snippets of conversation, all about pot and smoking pot, the value of pot, the legal issues, facts about harvesting, police reports, sometimes replacing the vocals all together, the band will lock into a killer groove and just pound it into the ground, over a constant litany of pro pot propaganda. But hell, it fits perfectly. And eventually that stuff becomes just part and parcel of Bongzilla's sound.
Which in other hands might be overbearing, cuz if a band doesn't have songs, and RIFFS, then nothing else would matter. But these guys kill, the riffs thick and distorted, groovy and weirdly catchy, some tracks a plodding ultra doom dirge, others furiously rocking sludge, the vocals a near black metal screech, the drums pounding and massive, but it's ALWAYS all about the riffs (and the weed). And the riffs here are massive and hooky, super distorted and blown out, hypnotic and so so so heavy.
This reissue compiles Bongzilla's smoking debut, Stash, and their follow up ep, Methods For Attaining Extreme Altitudes, a three song chunk of ultra sludgy stoner doom, culminating in the nearly 14 minute stoner metal epic "Smoke / I Love MaryJane", which begins at a pretty serious clip, before slipping into spaced out bleary eyed smoke drenched ultra doom, a minimal plodding trudge, bordering on Khanate territory, building gradually to a chaotic Hawkwind meets Monster Magnet stoner space rock freak out, all swirling distorted guitar, washes of keening feedback, more snippets and samples, the whole thing eventually blissing out into a buzzing droning tribal outro.
We can only imagine how good this stuff must sound stoned, or maybe if you were -actually- stoned, they would cancel each other out and you would hear nothing but silence. Whatever...
Needless to say, this shit is WAY recommended, for stoners and straight edge stoner sympathizers alike...
Here's the Seattle band that we always confuse with Blood Of The Black Owl. I guess we need to learn to read. Anyway this is their second album, following up The Feast released on 20 Buck Spin two years ago. Again, it's a brootal, sludgey concoction of blackened 'metal of death' musick. 11 bombastically bulldozering tracks with some sort of anti-Christian, astrological agenda, or something. This is definite bad mood music, on the doomy side of death metal a la Incantation. Thick and crushing, with guttural DM vox, and much atmospheric gloom pervading the slower parts. The majestic, monstrous hell-belch that is BOBE's Horoskopus shows that these guys, several of whom used to be in a metalcore band called Teen Cthulhu, have matured into a full-grown Cthulhu! Wish we woulda seen 'em on their recent tour with Watain but we were busy working on the list that night...
Blacker than black metal from 20 Buck Spin, the label best known for bringing forth a great deal of quality DOOOOOOOM to mankind from bands like Graves At Sea and Black Boned Angel. So you can imagine that any black metal they'd put out would be some heavy duty stuff... indeed as is the Book Of Black Earth, who hail from the frozen tundra of, uh, Seattle. The band features ex-members of the late, lamented Teen Cthulhu. They've shed any of the jocularity wrongly suggested by their old band's moniker, however, and have gotten even MORE brutal. It's double bass blasting death metal style aggression mixed with the grandiose, epic majesty (and keyboards) of Nordic black metal. The vocals are on the guttural, DM side of things, though with a BM rasp. And (as you might expect) some sludge-trudging doom riffs are wielded as well. Yes, it's supremely heavy, though there is a welcome amount of melody to be found amidst the screams, distortion, and drum-pummel. Yet another elite horde of warriors have joined the North American black metal army!!
First proper non cd-r release from this aQ beloved one man black metal band, makes sense that it would end up on Paradigms, whose list of releases reads like most aQ customers' record collections: Murmuure, The Angelic Process, Decrepit Spectre, Woburn House, Fog In The Shell, Gnaw Their Tongues, Hjarnidaudi, Mourner, Wraiths, Throne Of Katarsis, Titan, Utlagr... You might as well add Book Of Sand to that list.
Before Book Of Sand, there was an atmospheric doom metal duo called Light, when Light ended, half of Light became Book Of Sand and released How Beautiful To Walk Free, a cd-r that we (and lots of you) went nuts for. Not your typical buzzing blackness, but something more abstract, a churning morass of warm black shimmer and blurred abstract riffage, a swirling sonic drift that was as much black metal as it was avant abstract metallic minimalism. Destruction, Not Reformation (one of TWO Book Of Sand releases on this week's list) takes that same atypical black metal sound and pushes it even further out, creating a sort of chamber music black metal, strings and piano augment the usual guitar buzz and drum blast, creating lush almost orchestral sounding swells of blackened buzz, soaring and majestic, and much like Liturgy, the frenzied tremolo picked riffage becomes something else entirely, mesmerizing symphonic squalls of blurred melody, and while that picking is lightning fast, it's set amidst a sound that is much slower, a heaving droney creep, lumbering and lurching, and wreathed in that frenzied black buzz, a sort of transcendental ur-drone, woven into the grim black fabric of these songs. Although grim and black only scratches the surface of the sounds found here, some of the tracks are like disembodied pop songs, shoegazey and impossibly melodic, just wrapped in buzzing swirls of blackness, while others sound like folk songs burned black, the strings so lyrical and soulful and the perfect balance for the brittle buzz, and yet even at its most intense and dense and buzzy and black, the sound is still washed out and woozy, blurred and smeared and gorgeously dreamlike, the is atmospheric, ethereal, melodic and mysterious black metal, the buzz is burnished into something much smoother, the howled vokills are buried beneath layers of sound, all bleeding into each other, a super saturated sprawl of sound, blackened and buzzy, but also breathlessly beautiful.
After conjuring up three killer discs of home brewed lo-fi blackened ultra doom as Light, the band decided to call it quits, which isn't that surprising considering their album titles: A Million Dead Beneath The Ice, Life Is Meaningless & Goes On Forever, Worse Than Anyone Would Have Expected. C'mon, a band can only sustain that level of misery and misanthropy for so long. Thankfully, one half of Light has returned with his new project, Book Of Sand, a similarly moody and murky outfit, but with a sound much more raw and black, a sea of churning blurred riffage, of buried blast beats, and hysterical shrieked vocals, not as noisy as WOLD, or as chaotic as Portal, but some smeary bleary otherworld right in between.
But it's not that simple to describe these guys, while the opener is a dizzying swirl of disembodied black metal drift, the second track sounds almost like Circle, a simple motorik beat, and locked and looped rhythm, eventually the drums shift to double kick, the guitar shift to something more atonal and minor key, the reverb drenched vokills grow more maniacal, but throughout, that krautrocky groove remains, turning the otherwise raw blackness into some sort of hypnoblack metal.
The rest of the record is a blown out blur, but one that slips from in-the-red ferocity, with soaring Liturgy like trills, to total buzz drenched white noise blow out, to tangled gnarled buzzy weirdness, to weirdly minimal lo-fi muted thrum, finally finishing off with the nearly 14 minute "When We Are Gone, The World Will Be Awash With Light", a warped sprawl of slowly mutating black metal, that sounds like it's either slowing down, or melting, the various elements becoming less and less distinct, bleeding and oozing into each other, attaining at one point an almost shoe gaze-y bliss, albeit constructed from black buzz and shards of white noise. Fucking awesome.
Just like the Light cd-r's, this one comes in a handcrafted, silkscreened sleeve, complete with Japanese style obi, but unlike the Light records, this one is a proper cd.
One of TWO new releases from Midwestern one man black metal band Book Of Sand, the other, a cd on Paradigms, is a gorgeous slab of washed out droney, avant droned out black metal blur, this one is a similarly abstract chunk of outsider blackness, a record made up entirely of covers, all of them old traditional folk songs, reimagined as buzzing blasting black metal songs, and as weird a concept as it may seem, it actually works quite well, the lilting melodies and sing song arrangements translate quite well, and the fact that the man behind Book Of Sand also plays violin/fiddle, it adds still another traditional folk element, mostly introducing the melody before the blackness and buzz come in, but sometimes carrying the melody throughout.
Other than the songs, the sound itself is pure black metal, the guitars buzz and the drums pound and blast, the vocals are harsh and howled, the sound is washed out and blurry, buzzy and blackened, but in this context, playing these songs, the whole thing is transformed into something totally transcendent, something dark and mysterious and strangely super emotional, the songs themselves, one a 15th century French folk song, one a traditional Appalachian folk song, one a traditional African American lullaby from the South and so on, are already so powerful, and timeless, and are imbued with such power and energy, having been played and performed for generations, sometimes centuries, but when wedded to this powerful buzzing blackness, this intense and metallic sound, they somehow become even more intense. Other black metal bands have definitely dabbled with traditional folk musics, but something about these songs, and these versions, make this seem really extra special. Haunting, and heavy, and mysterious.
Packaged in a brown yardstick sleeve, silkscreened with black ink, inside a printed cardstock insert, and a silkscreened patch, the whole thing wrapped up with twine, and yeah, VERY LIMITED!! ONLY 100 COPIES!!!
We've long been obsessed with this Midwestern one man black metal band, their twisted combination of bedroom black metal buzz and more abstract sonic experimentation, be it clean guitar drift, or violin, is exactly what we wanted to hear, there is no shortage of blasting and buzzing, and as much as we love that stuff, we also love hearing black metal pushed in new directions, and BoS definitely blazed, and continue to blaze, their own unique sonic path, so much so, that it's often been a struggle to get their records released. We were pretty thrilled when UK label Paradigms released the last Book Of Sand, and were in some way were not all that surprised to see it receive a zero percent rating on Metal Archives, cuz the music of BoS is not the sort of grim kvlt black metal that most metalheads want to hear, or would even understand if they did, and hell, this new one's not gonna further that cause at ALL.
Which of course means we LOVE it. While some more familiar tropes of black metal are present, some buzzing guitars, and some shrieking vocals, in every other way, this is barely black metal, in fact, if we had to boil it down to just a few words, we might describe it as some sort of slo-mo blackened doom-jazz. Yep. There are strings, and horns, and what drums there are tend toward more of a shuffle and skitter, and while there are some furious buzzing guitars, they're pushed WAY toward the background, transforming any identifiable black metal riffage into something more like a droning atmospheric backdrop, while in the foreground, clean guitars unfurl woozy abstract melodies, wreathed in deep buzzing strings, and a hazy cloud of Jandekian reverby shimmer. The pace is glacial, the mood is melancholy, the vibe is haunting and otherworldly, and occasionally, when the vocals drop out, and you can hear those distant guitars, there's a distinctly black metal vibe, but it strangely muted, those fast picked guitars blurred and wedded to that slo-mo jazzy shuffle, bleating horns, it's pretty strange, but fantastic too, it's definitely unlike anything you've heard, (black) metal or otherwise, moody and mysterious and definitely way too whatthefuck for most metalheads, but if you're after something twisted and dark, buzzy and abstract, a little bit jazzy and atmospheric, but still in its own way dark and sinister and blackened, then you might just end up digging this as much as we do.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!!! And yeah, they're real cds, not cd-r's!
Yes it is for real - Pat Boone in leather and shades, riding a Harley, belting out a dozen heavy metal classics. The likes of Judas Priest, Metallica, Dio, Ozzy, Alice Cooper, etc. All cower trembling at the feet of Mr. Boone, who croons their tunes in amazingly hilarious and often quite catchy pop arrangements...You haven't lived until you've heard "Crazy Train" complete with swinging horns and the "choo-choos" of backing vocalists!
There's white metal, there's UNblack metal, and then there's unabashed Christian black metal, all of which we find endlessly fascinating, due in no small part to the fact that black metal by definition is Satanic, certainly evil and grim, so reimagining black metal as something holy, something celebrating the Lord, is tantamount to blasphemy, if you can in fact blaspheme something inherently blasphemous. The other strange thing, is that unblack metal and Christian black metal, at least in our experience, seems WAY weirder. As if that was one way to create a separate more virtuous strain of black metal, the sound, the production, the arrangements, it always seems so much more bizarre and fucked up. And heck if there was anything that might lure us over to the other side, it would be a record like this, the debut from Dutch duo Borgazur. And yeah, beyond being buzzy and heavy and black, this is one weird record. Let's start with the non-musical elements. The record is called 2P3" Alchemists Earth Of Aeon A.C. Not really even sure what that means. The two members are called Kildreth The Elder and Knight Ilithrir. Some song titles: "Preface To Our Cogent", "The Repeat Of Underestimated Allures", "Prognostication Of Victorious Travail", and how about this one: "Alchemy Of Alleviation When A Fib Is Prevaricated"!! The cover art is a crazy collage of skulls and lions and Hitler and coins and all sorts of other stuff, superimposed over some mystical forest. The lyrics are printed within, and heavily footnoted, referencing various books of the Bible, even their names are culled from the Good Book. Phew. But then there's the music, which is equally bizarre.
Fast and furious, and almost symphonic, super complex and mathy, the drums lightning fast, the riffs gnarled and buzzy, tons of lurching stop start arrangements. There are some haunting clean vocals drifting in now and again, some clean folky bits, even some blackened drones, but for the most part this is frenzied epic blackness, like Solefald or Borknagar or Dimmu Borgir but mixed with a little Deathspell, or S.V.E.S.T., a strange blend of symphonic heaviness, and grim black buzz, but even then, totally its own black beast, a sound fucked up and fractured, dizzying, confusional and seriously and awesomely OUT THERE.
Yes, yet another new Boris release, however this one is not entirely new. Two of the best tracks from their epic Heavy Rocks release, slightly different demo versions as far as we can tell. Not sure if everyone needs this, as it is a bit pricey, but Boris freaks will no doubt want this, for the slightly different versions as well as the cool seventies line drawing band portrait cover art. And vinyl fanatics may want to pick this up since Heavy Rocks was cd only, so these are the only two tracks from those sessions to make it on to wax!
Boris really frustrate us. We love them. A LOT. They are one of our favorite bands around. Masters of sludge / psych / doom / dirge / drone. Yet they insist on releasing records in tiny editions that do nothing but piss off the people who love their band. Thus we are constantly faced with the problem of never being able to get enough copies for everyone who wants one. So now we have this new picture disc single. We ordered 50 copies. And ended up with six copies to list. So we wracked our brains to try and figure out the best way to sell these six copies and we decided to do it by lottery. I know, it sucks, but what else can we do? At least this way everyone has a chance. So if you want one, go ahead and order it like normal (locals, you gotta email too). On Monday, we'll take all the names of folks who ordered 'em and draw six at random to sell 'em to. Best we can do. Oh, and it's a pretty great single too!
Ok, here's one for all the AQ customers who we know are always hankering for the state-of-the-art in "drone-metal" (i.e. those who can't get enough of the likes of Earth, Melvins "Lysol", Sunn 0))), Corrupted, Esoteric, etc.). Thanks to noted label-of-doom Southern Lord, we've got the new domestic reissue of the 1996 full-length debut from this amazing Japanese band. We actually used to stock the import version back when it first came out, but never were able to get very many and it's been unavailable for a long long time. Souther Lord's new "Super Low Frequency Version" features new artwork and (doubtless much to the annoyance of the three or four people who manged to get the original import) a seven minute appropriately named bonus track, "Dronevil2". That makes this a 73 minute, two-track disc, as the title track itself is one of those rare, slow motion, maximum riff glacial drone songs that stretches out over (previously) the entire length of the cd! Heavy duty stuff indeed. It makes sense that the name Boris comes from a Melvins song. And also that one of their other albums is a collaboration with Japan's king of dark psych guitar, Keiji Haino. Now we're waiting for their fantastic second disc, "Amplifier Worship", to get reissued domestically as well (watch this space). Recommended, doom freaks.
Fans of the band that began as Japan's answer to the Melvins, and then took a wayback machine ride into the '70s, Boris, can start rejoicing now. After a long while, we've finally got a whole bunch of Boris back in stock. AND, we've got a whole brand new recording as well! Whoo-hoo. Akuma No Uta is a 32 minute, six song mini-album that offers up a smorgasbord of styles from past Boris albums, drawing from the heavier-than-thou rumble of Absolutego, the exquisite beauty of Flood, and the sheer jams-out-kickin' of Heavy Rocks. Starting off with a two and half minute Earth-esque drone-metal intro (although for some reason unknown to us, the intro track on the vinyl version is seven minutes longer than that on the cd, so drone freaks may have to get the lp, or what the heck, get both!), the record then slams into the riffed-out, noisy stormer "Ibitsu". Distorted, manic, tear-shit-up stuff. After another song in the same Hendrix meets the Stooges style psych-punk rawk vein, Boris switch gears again, for the album's centerpiece, a twelve-minute opus entitled "Naki Kyoku" that begins all super languid, quiet and pretty before building into a soaring psychedelic jam. The jams continue on the next track, another stoner rockin' blow-out. Finally, title track "Akuma No Uta" winds things up with a return to the immense sludge grind of track one, melded into a headbanging groove, ending the disc on an adrenaline high. I'm sure there's mulleted, pot-smoking high-schoolers in Japan scribbling Boris logos on their binders...or so we'd like to think.
You'll note from the price that the yen isn't doing us Americans any favors right now. Ah well. Boris is worth a few extra bucks, as fans will no doubt agree. Worth their weight in yen for sure, and well, you know they're heavy. The vinyl version is even pricier, but it's perhaps got the cooler artwork (yes, they're different) with a cover that perfectly re-creates Nick Drake's Bryter Layter! Except with double neck electric guitar-bass instead of acoustic guitar... Real nice.
And be aware (beware?), for soon to come is another Boris, the bottom-heavy full-length known as Boris At Last aka Feedbacker. We should have that as soon as it's out, we'll keep you informed!
Yowza! We are *so* excited to finally have stock (and at a nice price, too) of this masterpiece of heaviosity by the amazing Japanese band Boris, who have become big AQ-faves over the past few years. The more-than-aptly-titled "Amplifier Worship" is their
A good shorthand description of "Amplifier Worship" would be to say that it sounds like a cross between the low-end riffage of Boris' obvious heroes the Melvins, and the more recent, rhythmic trance experiments of their countrymen the Boredoms. Psychedelic punk metal, utterly crushing. Pretty much essential to anyone who is into "heavy"! If you like the dirgey sludge of Corrupted and Earth, as well as the more rocked-out sludge of Sleep and Melvins (circa "Ozma" and "Bullhead"), you'll love Boris! Recommended!!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Good news, Boris fans. Thanks to Southern Lord, we now finally have stock again AGAIN of this masterpiece of heaviosity and former AQ-record-of-the-week by the amazing Japanese band Boris, who have become big AQ-faves over the past few years. The more-than-aptly-titled "Amplifier Worship" was their 2nd full-length release (after their mighty one-song drone-slab "Absolutego" but before the mind-blowing, semi-acoustic "Flood" and the stoner-rockin' genius of "Heavy Rocks"); it originally came out in 1998 and has been, on and off, pretty much unavailable in the US. Man's Ruin was going to release it domestically a while back, actually, but that fell through because of that label's sudden, unfortunate demise. Now our friends at Southern Lord, who made "Absolutego" available over here, have gotten around to releasing "Amplifier Worship" in the States. A happy day indeed. It's cheaper than the import, we should be able to keep it in stock for more than just a week, and, of course, it still rules!!
A good shorthand description of "Amplifier Worship" would be to say that it sounds like a cross between the low-end riffage of Boris' obvious heroes the Melvins, and the more recent, rhythmic trance experiments of their countrymen the Boredoms. Psychedelic punk metal, utterly crushing. Pretty much essential to anyone who is into "heavy"! If you like the dirgey sludge of Corrupted and Earth, as well as the more rocked-out sludge of Sleep and Melvins (circa "Ozma" and "Bullhead"), you'll love Boris! Recommended!!
And don't feel too bad if you already bought the more expensive Japanese import version. First off, you're that much cooler. Secondly, there's no bonus tracks or anything on this edition to make it any better. Thirdly, the redesigned, green-tinted package, while striking, happens to incorporate a GUMMI WORM in the spine of the jewel case. I'm sorry, that's just not a good idea... But if you don't already have the import, this is a must-have and a bargain even with the gummi worm, which should still be edible when you get your copy and so thus is easily dealt with.
Ah, BORIS! The band that everybody loves (or if they don't love 'em, they probably love to hate 'em...). The Melvins-worshipping Japanese "heavy rock" band that started off in the '90s as an import-only cult fave, and eventually got picked up over here by Southern Lord. The next thing you know, they turned into an unstoppable juggernaut of super limited edition releases and unlikely collaborations, and got BIG. For a while, they were definitely a band that could do no wrong, combining that Melvins-y sludge, and equally Melvins-y weirdness, with their own, innate Japanese "WTF?" aesthetic... In addition they boast the presence of a female singer/guitar player, Wata, who is both cute and talented. And making themselves even more potent proposition, they also recruited noted psychedelic guitar whiz Michio Kurihara (Ghost, White Heaven, Stars) more or less permanently into their ranks.
Yet, in recent years, Boris has also been courting a backlash, the way we see it, as anything hyped to the skies usually does. Those aforementioned ridiculously limited editions have something to do with it... and what can come off as a too ironic attitude to everything... and when we've seen 'em live, well, memo to drummer Atsuo: the gong is cool, but the headset microphone maybe isn't so much.
So, we've been Boris fans for a long long time, and still are, but we'll confess to wondering if it could be said that Boris finally (?) "jumped the shark" with last year's BXI ep, wherein they, oddly enough, teamed up with rock star Ian Astbury of The Cult (who is presumably still "big in Japan"). That disc was probably the first Boris release in history that didn't merit highlight status on our list... but hey, nobody's perfect.
But now, as if rising to the challenge, and/or making said challenge all the harder for themselves, Boris are back with not one but TWO* new albums for new US label Sargent House.
There's Attention Please, which undoubtedly will get a lot of attention, and not just 'cause of the glamor shot of Wata on the cover. She also sings on all the tracks, to this is definitely one for all you Wata fanciers out there! The other one is called Heavy Rocks, not to be confused with the earlier Boris album, that's also titled Heavy Rocks. Huh, what's with that, Boris? Why give two totally different albums the same name? Obviously to invite comparison (and for the record, while we're definitely digging this new purple 2011 one, if we had to choose between 'em, we'd pick the original, orange 2002 Heavy Rocks). Naming an album Heavy Rocks in the first place is a bold move, having two of 'em is just silly. Or ironic. Or something. Brilliant, perhaps. Oh, and this Heavy Rocks features another guest appearance from Ian Astbury, doing backing vocals on the track "Riot Sugar". There's other guests on the album as well: Aaron Turner (Isis, Mamiffer) and Faith Coloccia (Mamiffer), and regular Boris collaborator Kurihara. Heavy friends for Heavy Rocks!
First up, let's talk about Attention Please. Of the two albums, possibly more interesting to us as it's really quite a departure for Boris, plus we've always found Wata to be their most appealing singer anyway. Her delicate vocals are accompanied by some of the band's softest, most mellow material yet. There's acoustic guitars, and electronica elements, and it's all really quite nice. At times dramatic, dancey, dreamy, and/or rockin', one thing it's not is sludgey. Not that it doesn't get loud and noisy at times - shoegazing explosion of "Spoon" could probably have gone on the accompanying Heavy Rocks just as easily. But for the most part, if you didn't know it was Boris, well you wouldn't know it was Boris! The nervously rhythmic "Tokyo Wonder Land", with its stabbing psychedelic guitar sizzle, and glitchy tic-tic-tics of drums and electronics, is the highlight here for us, but we're pretty into the whole disc. Utterly captivating. Wata and Boris sound like they're channelling every dreamy girl fronted band from the nineties and beyond: My Bloody Valentine, Blonde Redhead, Adult, Amp,Noriko Tujiko, and even Grouper, and it works. Hopefully we'll hear more from this incarnation of Boris in the future, with Wata on the mic... we suspect we will! We think open minded Boris fans will indeed like this album - and it just might make 'em a lot of new fans too, who didn't have any idea Boris could or would sound like this.
Then, to Heavy Rocks (2011)... Drop the needle on track one, and you're greeted by a mean, heavy chugging riff, and it almost seems like, hey, they've gone full-on metal here, but that track, "Riot Sugar", becomes more of a howling psych stoner rock song, with hushed vocals. Off to a good start. The next track isn't nearly as heavy, it begins with some jangle, then a tangle of guitar soloing from Kurihara in his Quicksilver/Cippolina mode, there's also more of those hushed vox, and a general loud/soft songwriting dynamic, this track having echoes of both Nirvana and Can! Kinda sounds like something Kurihara's band Stars would do. Track three "GALAXIANS" is a more energetic, uptempo attack, lots of whoops and hollering going on, with thrashing drums, noisy guitar and electronic FX...
And so it goes, the album a mix of race-with-the-devil rockers and much moodier, shoegazey stuff. "Missing Pieces" is an example of the latter, a slow build from quiet ambience to almost Merzbowian jet-engine noise. The two final tracks are well worthy of mention, the penultimate, nearly 13 minute "Aileron" (greatly expanded, and of course heavied up, from the brief acoustic guitar version of the same track found on Attention Please), is another of the shoegazier pieces, super heavy, lumbering and lovely, reminding us a lot of Codeine, then after that there's "Czechoslovakia", at the very end of the album, a brief instrumental thrash metal number with electronic embellishments, sounds like something Circle would do in their NWOFHM mode, pretty killer, but of course we have to assume Boris sorta meant it as a joke, oh well, in any case it unfortunately fades out at 1:35, just as it's really gettin' good... if another five or ten minutes of this song as we imagine it actually existed, and were included here, that would definitely make Heavy Rocks even radder. Who knows, though, maybe it will continue on a forthcoming album entitled, Heavier Rocks?? (Our idea, but Boris you're welcome to it, sounds like something you'd do - well actually probably what Boris would do is release ANOTHER album also called Heavy Rocks.)
Anyway, to wrap up, these two new discs from Boris are both pretty darn good & satisfying overall. And both emblematic of the band's dabbling in an almost alt-pop, quasi-commercial (on their own terms, though!) direction, while staying HEAVY as they wanna be.
*There's actually a 3rd new Boris full-length as well, out in Japan only, the cleverly (?) titled New Album, which includes some of the same songs found on these two domestic US releases, though we'd imagine they're different recordings/versions, Boris being who they are (confusing!).
It's that time again. When AQ regulars start coming in every day like junkies looking for a fix, "Do you have it yet? C'mon man, when are you gonna get it?" And in fact, they are junkies, only they're looking for their HEAVINESS fix. That fix that only Japanese sludge/doom gods Boris can provide. We were pretty into Boris' recent Akuma No Uta cd ep, that added all sorts of sonic weirdness to their new found super-charged Stooges, stoner rock sound (a la Heavy Rocks). But some of us were still longing for a return to the glacial, slow motion doom/drone days of old: Amplifier Worship, Absolutego (sadly now out of print) even the comparatively serene Flood (Allan's favorite). And while we can't tell you this is entirely that return, it's darn close, and we'd say it's easily one of their best records yet. At Last (aka Feedbacker) is a breathtaking, 50 minute epic, split into five movements. Things start with a slow slow build, drones and rumbles and huge sheets of distorted guitars, weaving a heaving tapestry of sonic unrest, a static buzz that towers over you like an ancient stone wall, threatening to heave forward, bricks of sonic sludge crushing you beneath their suffocating weight. The big surprise though comes in the second movement as the wall of sludge dissipates into the ether, leaving a smoky hazy gauze, through which Boris emerge, as an almost-pop band, simple spare drumming, heavily reverbed shimmery chords, subtle muted wah guitar with a distant swirling backdrop of wind tunnel effects and howling feedback. Then vocalist Takeshi joins the fray with mumbled, keening sad boy vocals reminding us of Greg Dulli in his Afghan Whigs days, and then drums get all dubbed out, and suddenly everything is druggy and trippy, like the whole record was soaked in cough syrup. All the while Boris' guitar goddess Wata spits out super distorted leads, all melancholy and emotional, strings bending, feedback threatening to overwhelm the notes. The mellow parts definitely remind us of Codeine, which is a VERY good thing. Also, Windy and Carl, the Wipers a little, and even that eighties Homestead records sound. But it wouldn't be Boris if things didn't get HEAVY. And they do. Really heavy. The rest of the record is an aural tug of war between Boris' Earth/Sunn 0))) doom tendencies and their gorgeous, shimmery, druggy psychedelia. Imagine Godspeed You Black Emperor, raised on doom metal and seventies psych, and fronted by a female Hendrix! It's that fucking amazing.
It seems like every Boris release is more anxiously anticipated than the last. But somehow this is the one everybody's been waiting for. A double cd reissue of the previously vinyl only Dronevil. And just to ensure that Boris obsessives who already have the lp don't get off easy, the cd version adds two lengthy tracks to each disc and eliminates the pressing defect that plagued the lp release.
Dronevil is like the Japanese doom sludge version of the Flaming Lips' Zaireeka! Two discs, one drone, one heavy, intended to be played simultaneously on two separate stereos, but both equally listenable on their own.
The 'drone' disc is gorgeous, the first track is a shimmering swirl of sizzling cymbals, thick clouds of reverberating metal, sounding almost like some lost Organum track. Warm metallic swells, that undulate and subtly swing, layer upon layer of gorgeous high end sound. The second is a lugubrious trawl through some dimly lit cavernous underworld, thick tones swirl and drift, super minimal, like the slowed down sound of tolling bells, a slow motion ringing that shimmers and hums, like some distant soundscape viewed through thick panes of fogged up glass. The final drone track is another high end excursion, this time it's a whirl of densely layered tones, like sheets of feedback, played back at different speeds, creating strange tonal clusters and causing the various sounds to beat against each other producing subtle rhythms and streaks of upper register melody. Like a much more minimal Sunroof! or a Phil Niblock piece using Total outtakes as source material.
The sludgier disc (or the 'Evil' disc of the Dronevil pair) starts off with the 21 minute "Red", which starts off with some rumbling low end swells, mirroring the shimmering cymbals of it's ambient corollary on disc 1, then some abstract clean guitar, lots of space, about halfway through in come the keening distorted guitar feedback, streaks of psychedelic skree above the spacious abstract soundscape, finally about 15 minutes in the drums kick in, a simple post rock skitter, the clean guitars coalesce into a sort of Morricone-ish spaghetti western twang, above which some spare soulful leads drift and delicately soar, a slow loping groove like some strange slowcore hybrid of Codeine and Low. Dreamy and so good. The second track is where it actually gets heavy, a super distorted slow motion riff builds and builds until Boris are lurching along like some monstrous space rock behemoth, a sludgy trudge, thick walls of distorted guitar, simple pounding drums, all beneath wild psychedelic leads. Very Hawkwindy for sure. A brief near silent interlude sets us up for the hammer to fall, and it does, huge crumbling riffs dripping with filthy distortion, a sludgy black hole riff, and the wild psychedelic leads just keep getting more tangled and freaked out. So totally intense and heavy and super spaced out. The final track is another massive space doom workout. Heavy and thick and dense, but still somehow spacious and epic. Guitars grind and crunch but they also drift and hover weightless, the drums pound one second, and skitter jazzily the next, everything a huge swirling mass of psychedelic spaciness wrapped in massively thick guitars, ending in a barely there acoustic steel string coda.
Now when you play the two discs together it all makes sense. The heavy disc is so spare and spacey, because the first disc introduces all of these extra layers of sound, and the first disc is so abstract and minimal, because it's main purpose is to fill out the doom drenched space rock on disc two. But it barely matters. Together, the two discs perfectly meld into a killer postspacerock doom sludge record, heavy and dense and layered. Apart, you've got two amazing records, one super abstract free drone record, and one post slow core psychedelic spacerock record. You can't really lose either way.
And as always the packaging is absolutely breathtaking: a Japanese style mini gatefold, printed inside and out, black and light blue ink on thick textured brown cardstock, along the bottom a black and grey printed vellum obi, each disc in its own pocket and beautifully packaged with three circular plastic printed transparencies, all of the images combining with the printed image on the disc. WOW.
As you may know, Boris are perhaps Japan's number one Melvins worshippers! But that's not to say they're unoriginal, rather the opposite, since the Melvins themselves are so unpredictable and eccentric. But in terms of heaviness, Boris measure up. If you
In conjunction with the new album Smile, Boris offer up this super limited remix 12", already out of print, limited to 1000 copies worldwide, we only got 40 copies, so once these are gone, probably by the time you've gotten this far into the review, that's IT.
So two songs, both remixed versions of songs from other releases. One a super effected revamped version of "Message" the opening track from the Japanese version of Smile, which itself is a remixed version of "Statement" from the Southern Lord 7" and the US version of Smile. Confused yet? Welcome to Boris country.
So the remixed "Message" takes the original, and drenches it in FX, strips much of the guitar away, leaving just that relentless tribal rhythm, and then wrapped all around it, various little sonic flourishes, drones, and shimmers, little melodic tangles, long drawn out high end streaks, whirs and little stuttery strums, and the original's "woo hoo" vocals. Super minimal and trancey and blissed out. A bit like Boris filtered though later Boredoms.
But the real attraction is the remix of "Floor Shaker", the original was exclusive to the now out of print Southern Lord 7", but here the song is totally pulled apart and twisted into new shapes. At first, the vibe sounds really retro, skittery high hats, the vocals all by their lonesome, then some disco-y beats and some super fuzzy synths. Very new wave sounding. On the verge of being cheesy, but paired up with the plaintive almost emo vocals, the result is actually pretty cool.
But as the track progresses, it gets weirder and weirder, the synths more skeletal and damaged sounding, the beat a simple throbbing pulse, the whole thing doused in weird feedback and electronic squelches, high end chirps, and a cool looped vocal snippet, the vibe much more M83, a sort of washed out sun dappled overdriven shoegaze-y electro bliss out, shades of Health, Crystal Castles, Justice, and that whole new wave of modern synthsoaked dirty disco electropop, all wrapped around little bits of fuzzy blown out Boris.
Again, already out of print, limited to 1000 copies worldwide, we got 40. That's it. Packaged in plain yellow 12" sleeves, sealed shut with a sticker.
It's indeed that time again. Where our customers act like crazy junkies who have FINALLY received their latest fix, which I guess they technically are. Although in this case the drug of choice is Japan's Boris, and the current fix is twofold, the just released full length Pink (reviewed elsewhere on this list) and this here DVD, the misleadingly titled Heavy Metal Me. Boris fans of all stripes will find stuff on here that is essential -- videos, a short film, and two live sets for those of you not lucky enough to see Boris on their recent tour.
First up is a video for the track "A Bao A Qu" from the soundtrack Mabuta No Ura, the perfect visual accompaniment to that track's ambient post rock drift, a sort of languid stroll around town, various band members walking down streets, sitting in parks, shots of skies and trees and shops warehouses and woods. Gorgeously tranquil. The next video is for another track from Mabuta No Ura, can't tell you the title cuz it's in Japanese, but it is an absolutely breathtaking series of abstact landscapes, that are perhaps either pieces of frayed and slowly undulating fabric, or maybe even internal organs, so alien looking and so beautiful.
The short film Heavy Metal Me is up next, a ten minute, super arty silent film with subtitles (in either Japanese or English), super blown out overexposed black and white and scratchy color Super8, very French New Wave, with quite a bit of sitting, and thinking, and walking and standing, lots of static shots and very obtuse subtitles. No sound, just occasionally the sound of no sound, a hissing distant white noise static. Quite beautiful actually!
Returning to the main, music side of Boris, you then get a live performance of "Feedbacker", the full 30 minutes, slow building and totally epic. With the stage drenched in rich colored lights, Wata stands illuminated, completely expressionless and immobile, a statue like guitar God! All the while the drummer and bass player work their way into a rock frenzy as the song reaches its superdistorted fuzz drenched climax.
The bonus track is a live performance of "Flood" in a tiny Japanese club, packed to the gills, with a ceiling just high enough for the band to stand on stage. Twenty minutes of creeping, drifting shimmering guitars and cymbal swells, before the sludge sets in, a monstrous pounding metallic crawl, with stoic guitarist Wata actually, for once, rocking out! Pretty amazing. And will definitely hit the spot for everyone who missed seeing Boris live last month.
As with everything Boris releases, beautifully designed and packaged. Even the menu and the credits look amazing, the credits especially with their dreamy ambient abstract Boris guitarscape accompaniment.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Heavy Rocks is -- to state the obvious if you've heard it -- a more than apt title for this newest (and long-awaited) collection of tuneage from everyone's favorite Japanese heavy rockers, Boris. Yes, the thunderous Tokyo trio of Takeshi, Wata, and Atsuo are back! We promised last year in our write-up of their amazing (but uncharacteristically mostly mellow) album Flood that Boris' next disc would be a return to the ROCK. And it is. No acoustic stuff here, nor even the lengthy droning dirges in which they have also indulged in the past. Nope, this one simply rocks hard and heavy, start to finish. Fans know that every Boris album is different, and this one can perhaps be characterized as Boris' "stoner rock" effort. Total Kyuss action! Still, with some grizzled nods to their all-time heroes, the Melvins. The first track, "Heavy Friends", is VERY Melvins (metallic, thudding, glacial) -- and even has a walk-on spoken contribution from Melvins drummer Dale Crover's ex-wife Lori (of Acid King). Speaking of heavy friends, guests pop up all over this release, actually -- there's some lead guitar by Eddie Legend of Japanese garage/rockabilly band The Mad 3, a track with analog synth twiddle courtesy Maso Yamazaki (Masonna/Christine 23 Onna), and another with some laptop computer fuckery from Masami "Merzbow" Akita (who also just completed a full-on collaborative album with Boris, see nearby for a review of that opus, the drone yin to this album's rock yang).
With or without the help of noiseniks Merzbow and Masonna, noisy, fuzzed-out psychedelic atmospheres abound here, but generally in the context of high energy, superheavy rockin'. Really, the album relaxes only for the spaced-out guitar bliss of "Soft Edge" halfway through. Tracks like "Korosu", "Dyna-Soar", "Death Valley", "Rattlesnake", and "1970" are all catchy, riff-laden showcases for Boris' brand of kick-ass rock n' roll. Even if you aren't into stoner rock, you should check this out because it easily surpasses most of the other bands operating within the genre. Irresistable. Honestly.
Ah, BORIS! The band that everybody loves (or if they don't love 'em, they probably love to hate 'em...). The Melvins-worshipping Japanese "heavy rock" band that started off in the '90s as an import-only cult fave, and eventually got picked up over here by Southern Lord. The next thing you know, they turned into an unstoppable juggernaut of super limited edition releases and unlikely collaborations, and got BIG. For a while, they were definitely a band that could do no wrong, combining that Melvins-y sludge, and equally Melvins-y weirdness, with their own, innate Japanese "WTF?" aesthetic... In addition they boast the presence of a female singer/guitar player, Wata, who is both cute and talented. And making themselves even more potent proposition, they also recruited noted psychedelic guitar whiz Michio Kurihara (Ghost, White Heaven, Stars) more or less permanently into their ranks.
Yet, in recent years, Boris has also been courting a backlash, the way we see it, as anything hyped to the skies usually does. Those aforementioned ridiculously limited editions have something to do with it... and what can come off as a too ironic attitude to everything... and when we've seen 'em live, well, memo to drummer Atsuo: the gong is cool, but the headset microphone maybe isn't so much.
So, we've been Boris fans for a long long time, and still are, but we'll confess to wondering if it could be said that Boris finally (?) "jumped the shark" with last year's BXI ep, wherein they, oddly enough, teamed up with rock star Ian Astbury of The Cult (who is presumably still "big in Japan"). That disc was probably the first Boris release in history that didn't merit highlight status on our list... but hey, nobody's perfect.
But now, as if rising to the challenge, and/or making said challenge all the harder for themselves, Boris are back with not one but TWO* new albums for new US label Sargent House.
There's Attention Please, which undoubtedly will get a lot of attention, and not just 'cause of the glamor shot of Wata on the cover. She also sings on all the tracks, to this is definitely one for all you Wata fanciers out there! The other one is called Heavy Rocks, not to be confused with the earlier Boris album, that's also titled Heavy Rocks. Huh, what's with that, Boris? Why give two totally different albums the same name? Obviously to invite comparison (and for the record, while we're definitely digging this new purple 2011 one, if we had to choose between 'em, we'd pick the original, orange 2002 Heavy Rocks). Naming an album Heavy Rocks in the first place is a bold move, having two of 'em is just silly. Or ironic. Or something. Brilliant, perhaps. Oh, and this Heavy Rocks features another guest appearance from Ian Astbury, doing backing vocals on the track "Riot Sugar". There's other guests on the album as well: Aaron Turner (Isis, Mamiffer) and Faith Coloccia (Mamiffer), and regular Boris collaborator Kurihara. Heavy friends for Heavy Rocks!
First up, let's talk about Attention Please. Of the two albums, possibly more interesting to us as it's really quite a departure for Boris, plus we've always found Wata to be their most appealing singer anyway. Her delicate vocals are accompanied by some of the band's softest, most mellow material yet. There's acoustic guitars, and electronica elements, and it's all really quite nice. At times dramatic, dancey, dreamy, and/or rockin', one thing it's not is sludgey. Not that it doesn't get loud and noisy at times - shoegazing explosion of "Spoon" could probably have gone on the accompanying Heavy Rocks just as easily. But for the most part, if you didn't know it was Boris, well you wouldn't know it was Boris! The nervously rhythmic "Tokyo Wonder Land", with its stabbing psychedelic guitar sizzle, and glitchy tic-tic-tics of drums and electronics, is the highlight here for us, but we're pretty into the whole disc. Utterly captivating. Wata and Boris sound like they're channelling every dreamy girl fronted band from the nineties and beyond: My Bloody Valentine, Blonde Redhead, Adult, Amp,Noriko Tujiko, and even Grouper, and it works. Hopefully we'll hear more from this incarnation of Boris in the future, with Wata on the mic... we suspect we will! We think open minded Boris fans will indeed like this album - and it just might make 'em a lot of new fans too, who didn't have any idea Boris could or would sound like this.
Then, to Heavy Rocks (2011)... Drop the needle on track one, and you're greeted by a mean, heavy chugging riff, and it almost seems like, hey, they've gone full-on metal here, but that track, "Riot Sugar", becomes more of a howling psych stoner rock song, with hushed vocals. Off to a good start. The next track isn't nearly as heavy, it begins with some jangle, then a tangle of guitar soloing from Kurihara in his Quicksilver/Cippolina mode, there's also more of those hushed vox, and a general loud/soft songwriting dynamic, this track having echoes of both Nirvana and Can! Kinda sounds like something Kurihara's band Stars would do. Track three "GALAXIANS" is a more energetic, uptempo attack, lots of whoops and hollering going on, with thrashing drums, noisy guitar and electronic FX...
And so it goes, the album a mix of race-with-the-devil rockers and much moodier, shoegazey stuff. "Missing Pieces" is an example of the latter, a slow build from quiet ambience to almost Merzbowian jet-engine noise. The two final tracks are well worthy of mention, the penultimate, nearly 13 minute "Aileron" (greatly expanded, and of course heavied up, from the brief acoustic guitar version of the same track found on Attention Please), is another of the shoegazier pieces, super heavy, lumbering and lovely, reminding us a lot of Codeine, then after that there's "Czechoslovakia", at the very end of the album, a brief instrumental thrash metal number with electronic embellishments, sounds like something Circle would do in their NWOFHM mode, pretty killer, but of course we have to assume Boris sorta meant it as a joke, oh well, in any case it unfortunately fades out at 1:35, just as it's really gettin' good... if another five or ten minutes of this song as we imagine it actually existed, and were included here, that would definitely make Heavy Rocks even radder. Who knows, though, maybe it will continue on a forthcoming album entitled, Heavier Rocks?? (Our idea, but Boris you're welcome to it, sounds like something you'd do - well actually probably what Boris would do is release ANOTHER album also called Heavy Rocks.)
Anyway, to wrap up, these two new discs from Boris are both pretty darn good & satisfying overall. And both emblematic of the band's dabbling in an almost alt-pop, quasi-commercial (on their own terms, though!) direction, while staying HEAVY as they wanna be.
*There's actually a 3rd new Boris full-length as well, out in Japan only, the cleverly (?) titled New Album, which includes some of the same songs found on these two domestic US releases, though we'd imagine they're different recordings/versions, Boris being who they are (confusing!).
Like those little tremors that come right before the big quake, after a seriously long period of near silence, new music has begun to seep out of the Boris camp recently, first, the super strange split we reviewed on the last list, that found Boris getting all shoegazey and Ariel Pink-y and teaming up with a weird Shadowfaxy techno group, now this record, the first in a series of three 7"s, which continues to demonstrate Boris' willingness to push sonic boundaries.
This first seven inch starts off with a bang, the band rocking up a storm Pink style, big and bombastic and blown out, psychedelic and in-the-red, massive guitar crunch and pretty ethereal vocals, wild drumming, a pretty serious slab of... well, heavy rock! Not a huge departure really, but it sounds great, and should have most Boris fanatics going nuts.
The flipside is another rocker, but this one is a bit more fuzzy and poppy, still plenty distorted and heavy, but super hooky, and crazy catchy, a poppier Boris is still probably heavier than most heavy bands on their best day, and like the A side, these new recordings sound fantastic, super hot and way suitable for headphone hearing abuse.
Cool super thick covers too, designed by Stephen O'Malley, and featuring a weird glamor shot of one of the band members, Takeshi we think, which we can only assume means each member will get their own glamorous cover shot. Weird, but hey, it's Boris. Odds are you know you already need this, and are already eagerly awaiting volume two, which drops next month. Can't wait...
Second volume in the Japanese Heavy Rock Hits series from long beloved Japanese heavy rockers Boris. Whereas the first volume was all over the map, with the trio exploring shoegaze-y bliss rock on one side, and some murky Ariel Pink-ish anti pop on the other, Volume 2 finds the band back in more recognizably Boris territory. Sort of.
The A side, "Heavy Metal Addict" falls somewhere between true metal tribute, and goofball taking-the-piss fucking around, with a bad ass meaty main riff, some soaring reverbed vocals, but then some weird Gary Glitter sing along / handclapping, and some really fucked up production, which at the beginning sounds like two records playing at once. The result is a bit loose, and sounds a bit like the band messing around at practice, but it's still fun, and a cool Pink era sounding metal jam. And check out the video online, which features Japanese glam band Sex Virgin Killer, a rad visual kei band (look it up!) rocking out, practicing, smashing stuff, and holy shit are they awesome looking, with some of the BIGGEST, wildest hair you'll ever see. Weird that Boris just basically dubbed their music over another band's video, but it did get us all excited to track down some Sex Virgin Killer music....
Flip the record over, and stuff gets all weird again, with the band hauling out the drum machine, and getting all lo-fi pop / eighties new wave, with angular guitars, stuttery rhythms, and breathless soft focus vox. Pretty cool. Sure a lot of folks are wondering 'what the fuck', but Boris have always been the sort of band to defy and confound, and while we may yearn for the days of Flood and Amplifier Worship, we're way digging this new wave thing Boris have going on now.
Garish glamor shot cover art, looks like each member will get the cover of one single, saving Wata for last of course, this one features the drummer, we think, with big teased hair, and unzipped jeans revealing his pink tie dyed briefs, all beneath a haze of Stephen O'Malley geometric graphic design. Weird.
Like the first volume, and the forthcoming third, super limited, and it would be a drag not not have the whole set, so hop to it!
Finally, the third and final volume in the Japanese Heavy Rock Hits 7" series from Japanese heavy rockers Boris. Although based solely on this series of singles, one could be forgiven for thinking Boris were anything but heavy rockers. Seems like these singles were a chance for the band to stretch out and try on some different sounds for size, and the results have been pretty great actually.
Each 7" featured a different band member on the cover, and fan boys have been waiting for this one, when lead guitarist and Boris crush Wata takes center stage. Glamorous and bored, or maybe just aloof, Wata poses beneath a flurry of Stephen O'Malley's geometric abstractions on the cover, while inside, on the A side, Wata croons languidly over a simple skeletal drumbeat and washed out clean guitar strum, almost like a way more minimal stripped down sonic youth. Minor key, woozy, melancholy, the vocals front and center, while the band offer a hushed slowcore backdrop, delicate and mopey and a little bit dreamy, with a definite '90s indie rock vibe, with a little Mazzy Star mixed in, but not nearly as shoegazey, just really sad and slow and indie folky.
The flipside however finished things with a band, or more specifically, a wall of crumbling distortion, then a sheet of feedback, and then some slow plodding blissed out mope rock, with crashing drums, crooned vox, epic and mournful, another nod to the indie rock of old, but given a little Nadja / Jesu style sonic makeover. A lilting main vocal melody drifts ethereally over snarls of incendiary guitar, and plodding doomic drums, everything lysergic and staring-into-the-sun heavy. Dizzying and darkly dreamy, a sort of future heavy rock doom-ed blown out ballad. Really cool for sure, but these singles definitely have us wondering what the heck the next Boris full length is gonna sound like... can't wait to find out.
Of bands that we at Aquarius would LOVE to experience live, Boris would certainly be near the top of the list. We eagerly await the day they come (back) to San Francisco (yes -- apparently they did play here once before, like way back in 1995, but we didn't know about 'em then). So of course this brand new live DVD by Boris is a big thrill for us, and we're sure for many of you too. Finally, we get to see Boris in action, the powerhouse trio backed by a wall of Orange amplification, tearing the house down on one night of their "Black Summer Tour", July 12th 2003. And one thing this film reveals that perhaps not all Boris fans know is that guitarist Wata is a girl, cute as can be even as she wrenches the most doomed-out distortion from her axe. Meanwhile vocalist Takeshi attracts some attention wielding his trademark double neck bass/guitar, whilst Atsuo bashes the hell out of his drum kit.
For some reason this DVD doesn't seem to have a menu screen, it just starts up and goes. First a black screen, then some faint titles fade in and out, feedback builds, and out of the blackness -- BORIS! Devastating a packed, smokey club full of metal-crazed Japanese fans, fists and devil signs aloft. Shot with multiple cameras and edited MTV-style this is a real pro production. After the black hole gravity of the first song ("Huge" from Amplifier Worship), Boris rip into some more uptempo material, stoner rock thrash outs from Heavy Rocks and their recent Akuma No Uta ep. There's about an hour of live performance, ten songs total, from punk mania to brutal psych dirge. And it's not all straight concert footage, there's some backstage shots and arty compositions of almost-stills about a half-hour in.
Following the show, the DVD continues with four Boris videos. Two are taken from Heavy Rocks: a black-and-white-and-orange "Korosu" and a live-montage clip for "1970". The other two are from Akuma No Uta, both animations, one a frenzy of CG techno-weaponry, the other a low-tech cartoon made from smudged sketchbook art a la the cover to the Akuma No Uta cd. Pretty cool both of those, as is the entire DVD! ----* ----* Two New tUMULt Releases : ----*
One of the tracks from Boris's recent J-Pop infused opus New Album gets the 12" remix treatment, making for a Boris release that's even further removed from their Melvins-y heavy rock roots.
The A side features ALTZ's "Fall In Love Mix", the B side's got Hatchback's "Pacific Wind Mix". Hatchback we're less familiar with, but ALTZ is interesting, we know 'em from their Boredoms remix on Super Roots 10 - and also the isophonic boogie woogie of the Altz Meets Roland P. Young album that EM put out a while back.
We just have a handful of these imports, and they come in black sleeves, nothin' fancy. For super big Boris fans and DJs only, we assume.
Outside of being Japanese, and VERY VERY loud, one wouldn't necessarily think Boris and Merzbow had a whole lot to offer each other sonically. But as we know, that is most certainly not the case. Their first outing together was the legendary Megatone record, a stretched out doom drenched drone of mammoth proportions, sure there were guitars and basses and plenty of laptop fuckery and analog squiggle, but it was all smeared into a totally mesmerizing , incredibly dense drone record. Match up number two, the recent LP only 04092001, threw some people for a loop, especially folks all ready for the drone. Instead they were given what was essentially a Merzbow produced Boris ROCK AND ROLL set. Like their Heavy Rocks record, an energetic blast of overdriven, Stooges-esque sludge stomp RAWK, but for 04092001 mixed on a Fisher-Price mixing board, broadcast through a transistor radio stuck between stations. Cool for sure, but much more noisy and messy. So here we are with the awesomely titled Sun Baked Snow Cave, which finds Merzbow and Boris together again, and returning to a sound much like Megatone, but with a definite nod to Flood as well (our favorite Boris record btw). In fact we might go out on a limb and claim that this is the best (non-rock) Boris record since Flood!
Gorgeous ghostly guitars, simply strummed or delicately picked, each note and chord set adrift in a vast expanse of barely there sound, spare, drifting and languid. After about ten or twelve minutes the guitars are suddenly darkened by a slow building cloud of distant rumble and reverberant thunder, with lightning flashes of electronic grit, hiss and flicker. Then, about twenty minutes in, the bottom drops out (or IN) and the sky falls when a MASSIVE slab of super distorted downtuned guitar is laid out, a constant buzzing roar, over which Merzbow drapes all manner of glitch and stutter and crunch and crackle. A dizzyingly dense swirl of free noise drone, thick and slowly shifting, noisy, but in a muted controlled way. Eventually the storm passes, and the last twenty minutes of the record is one extended stretch of dreamy drift, surrounded by Merzbow at his most subtle, little smears of sonic haze, sort of like the audio equivalent of the afterimages you see when you stare at the sun. A haunting coda that gradually dissipates and fades to grey, and then black. Packaged in an exquisite Japanese style mini gatefold, with lovely black, white and blue metallic artwork by Stephen O'Malley.
More than a year after it was first announced, it's finally here. The anxiously awaited new lp from Japanese psych doom heavyweights Boris, and their Japanoise partner in sonic crime Merzbow. This is Boris / Merzbow matchup number FOUR for those of you keeping score. Now we know, that as with most new Boris releases, no description is really necessary, most of you probably haven't even made it this far, in fact, just seeing the word Boris triggers the perfect Pavlovian response, your finger immediately clicking on the BUY button. And who are we to argue, let's take a second and let the Boris freaks take care of business, then we'll go into a little more depth for those of you who might need to hear a bit more about the long overdue Walrus...
Okay, a brand new Boris record, we know you're excited. We are too. Boris have again teamed up with Merzbow. The two outfits had previously worked together on the absolutely killer drone record Megatone, the epic and sludgy Sun Baked Snow Cave, and the ear shredding live lp 04092001, and now here. The strange thing, is that these two tracks were recorded waaaaaaay back in 2001. So they may even in fact be from the same sessions that spawned one or all of those other releases. Back to business, two tracks, relatively brief, and as with all Boris releases, so completely gorgeously packaged. Deluxe thick gatefold, the front a sort of green to yellow fade, with the Boris / Merzbow logo done all Roger Dean 'Yes' style, the inside, a surreal landscape, also in the style of Roger Dean with some strange turtle/seal creature in the foreground. So completely beautiful. When the bottom drops out on the doom-sludge-drone market, these guys will be some seriously in demand graphic designers. But what does it sound like? Well that's funny too, cuz it's not at all what we expected.
The A side is actually in fact a cover of the Beatles "I Am The Walrus", and a pretty straight cover to boot, minus the noisy ministrations of Merzbow. Beginning with some simulated seal (or seagull?) sounds, the band launches into a fuzzy, laid back version of "Walrus", pretty cool for sure, but here it's all about Merzbow, adding all sorts of hiss and fuzz, most of the time it sounds like some spastic DJ scratching, relentless and dense, elsewhere it's snatches of white noise and weird industrial whirs. The middle chunk of the song finds Boris kicking it up a notch with Wata unfurling some killer Hendrixian leads, but it's almost drowned out by the Merzbow's noisy squalls. Minus the noise, this might not have been so exciting, a pretty straight ahead cover of an oft covered tune, but the strange textures and noisy backdrops manage to transform it into something pretty interesting.
The B side is what does it for us, a massive, overblown super distorted dirgedrone. A thick wall of crumbling guitars, and buzzing crackling electronic hiss, over a wild drum jam, the drums recorded super blown out. It's like Skullfower, Gate, SUNNO))), Yellow Swans and Birchville Cat Motel all jamming at once while a drummer tries desperately to kick up a competing din. Very free, VERY noisy, but pretty kick ass as well.
As with a lot of Boris releases, this is not necessarily one for the newbie, although it could make a decent 2 song sampler for the curious. Fans already know they MUST have it, Boris virgins might want to check out Flood, or Amplifier Worship, or if they are looking for more rock than dirge, maybe Pink, first, but if you're at all curious, don't dawdle, as with all things Boris this will be gone and only available on eBay before you know it...
All right, we got about 100 copies, as far as we can tell there were four different colors, including black. Here's how it works, first come first served on the colored vinyl, once we run out, it's back to black, if you won't be happy with black, then do not order AT ALL, we will not accept orders for ONLY the colored vinyl, we're going to assume, that the reason people buy records, and yes, even Boris records, is to listen to them, and to enjoy the music (wait, these collectible discs contain music??!?) so while it might be cool to have colored vinyl, it's the music you're after, so black will do just fine (and black sounds better as everybody knows), so go ahead and order it, if you're in time to get colored vinyl, you will, if not you'll get black. And as with most things like this, it's SUPER LIMITED and thus is limited to ONE PER CUSTOMER.
By itself, the name "Boris" on a new release creates a not-inconsiderable level of excitement amongst the heaviness-heads and Japanophiles 'round these parts. Add "with Michio Kurihara" to the cover and, well, the excitement, it's off the hook. You know what we mean, 'cause chances are, if you're reading this, you're already a Boris fan. And probably also are familiar with guitarist Kurihara from his 2006 collaboration with Boris, on the very wonderful Rainbow (he also guested on the more recent Smile, as well).
While Rainbow was a fairly song-oriented affair, with many moods and plenty of melodiousness, THIS new get-together is one for those of you into HUGE squalls of amps on 11, heavy duty GUITAR FREAK OUT. You won't really notice much in the way of, like, vocals on here. Or drums, for that matter. It's all about the motorpsycho guitar(s), which can sometimes sound more like airplane engines here (with, maybe, Neil Young flying the plane). Like we said, a guitar freakout. Not a stretch, of course, for Boris, who have albums with names like Feedbacker and Amplifier Worship, after all. And teamed up again with noted psychedelic axemaster Kurihara (White Heaven, Ghost) we're not surprised at all that they went for such a heavy, freeform guitar-centric sound. One that should be of instant appeal to anyone who's personal guitar gods are folks like Caspar Brotzmann, Keiji Haino, or China's Li Jianhong. Or, well, let's put it this way - at its mellowest, we could compare this to Nadja and/or SUNNO)))... the clouds in this Cloud Chamber are big but not exactly fluffy.
There's but two tracks here, both of lengthy, "side-long" duration (18:53 and 17:30). The first, "Cloud Chamber I", begins with deep pulsations of subtle sub-bass, building and building, joined by skree, skullflowering into psychedelic sheets of drone, culminating with what comes close to sheer white noise at the end. Even at its grinding-est, though, delicate feedback trails caress one's ears amidst the din. "Cloud Chamber II" simply starts off grindingly distorted, fuzzing and buzzing with divebomb attacks. But then proceeds to get even heavier - louder - and noisier!! By not much more than three minutes in, it sounds like something (everything!) in the recording studio is beginning to vibrate and collapse, you can imagine sparks shooting from the amplifiers, cabinets toppling, walls shaking, brains melting. And of course they just keep upping the ante on this destructo-, distorto- delic assault. A thing of literally devastating beauty... which physically reaches a peak at about the 13 minute mark, a point where it could easily be mistaken for the extreme electronic likes of Masonna, then suddenly quieting into blissed-out ambience for the final four minutes of this track. Sweet.
And this limited edition (1500 copies) Japanese import is packaged nicely, with some nice, stylishly subtle "advanced" design that, well, makes it look like a Japanese import.
Borknagar record number four I think (maybe 5, but who's counting?) and I'm going to go out on a limb and say this is maybe my favorite Borknagar record so far. The sound has changed quite a bit thanks to a new singer, a new keyboardist and a new
Epic Norwegian black metal band's fourth album, with lots of keyboards. Lots of keyboards. Keyboards galore. More catchy than grim, continuing the band's drift from brutality to bombast. Andee likes it.
Not sure what happened recently, but for a while there, there was a serious dearth of heavy bands in the Bay Area. And we mean HEAVY. Not just regular old metal bands, but bands doing something new with that heaviness. Prizehog, with their post Harvey Milk sludge, guitar synth and drums whipped up into a heaving black wave of crush. Wildildlife, who did call the Bay Area home for a while, their fractured psych pop metal weirdness, equal parts Butthole Surfers, Gaye Bykers On Acid, Black Sabbath and Adam Ant. Then there's Pigs, reviewed elsewhere on this list, who do their own sort of Melvins meets Motorhead thing. And now Borneo. Who are not nearly as heavy as any of those groups, but who infuse their considerable heft with some serious poppiness. The guitars are thick and crunchy and distorted and just slightly blown out, the drums pounding and propulsive, but where other bands might go for something more metallic, or totally chaotic, these guys tap into their indie rock roots, and the result is a super hooky hybrid, Jesu betwixt godheadSilo, with vocals, that less distorted and buried in the murk, could have been plucked right from a Pavement or Polvo song. It's a killer combo too, the music thick, and muscly and intense, with plenty of chug and grind, but all wrapped around some total classic indie rock. It's almost like Harvey Milk or Jesu covering Lync or Seam or even Codeine. The heart of these jams is melancholy and melodic, wistful and emotional, but that sound is given a serious facelift, and the result is, well, THIS. A kind of shoegaze-y metallic indie post rock that we are digging big time. Not sure what to call it, but usually, the harder it is to describe something, the cooler it is. And Charismatic Megafauna is indeed super cool...
If you're at all into the new wave of the old school of heavy metal, like we are - especially the most cult and underground elements of both the old and the new - then we think we've got something here you're gonna be stoked about. This aptly titled ep by Detroit upstarts Borrowed Time represents 21+ minutes of some of the catchiest, best written, truly authentically '80s sounding heavy metal we've heard from a "modern" band yet.
Originally released by Irish label Sarlacc Productions in 2011, as a four-track ep, this has been recently re-released by the band themselves with two extra songs, taken from their debut 7" (also 2011). So, we're glad we waited a while to list it! Now you get six tracks of Borrowed Time's impressive NWOBHM worship (they're named after a Diamond Head album after all). Those six tracks also include one not all that out of the way detour into explicit Manilla Road worship too, in the form of a cover of fan fave "Necropolis", sounding as ancient and epic as the original from Manilla Road's classic Crystal Logic lp. So you know where these guys are coming from - straight out of the '80s, up from the underground, living out their fantasies of a time long long ago when (obscure) giants like Manilla Road, Brocas Helm, Cirith Ungol (on the American side) and Diamond Head, Cloven Hoof, Angel Witch, etc. (on the British) strode the earth. Seriously, if you heard "Fog In The Valley" or "Burning Mistress" on some blog devoted to long lost '80s underground metal gems, you'd be fooled.
Astonishingly, these boys came and played in San Francisco recently - we saw 'em at Thee Parkside, opening for Castle and Occultation, a great show. Borrowed Time were fantastic, despite the absence of one of their two regular guitar players. Their energetic, young singer made up for it with his dramatic flourishes - with flowing long hair, mustache and leather jacket, he came across almost like a hesher version of Doug Henning - we half expected him to start doing magic tricks with scarves and whatnot (makes us think: how about a heavy metal singer who, like, produces colorful doves out of a hat or from his sleeve, and then instead of releasing them to fly away, bites their heads off a la Ozzy Osbourne??). Borrowed Time's vocalist didn't do anything like that, but he WAS entertainingly flamboyant, juggling many "invisible oranges" in his outstretched, gesturing hands throughout the evening. Which went so well with their music, the prime (and entirely sufficient) characteristic of which was that it was exceedingly singable SONG stuff, something we don't get enough of from most metal bands these days. But Borrowed Time have the knack, or the talent, or the magick, to have mastered that particular arcane metal art, conjuring mystic moods via heavy and epic songwriting. Up there with High Spirits and Christian Mistress in our estimation of metallic, melodic excellence that embraces the old school so successfully.
We're looking forward to their full-length, due out later this year on High Roller, we'll see if they can top this...
Paradigms continues to expand their sonic scope, while continuing to champion awesome and obscure heaviness. A look at past Paradigms releases reads like a list of aQ faves: The Angelic Process, Decrepit Spectre, Fog In The Shell, Gnaw Their Tongues, Hjarnidaudi, Wraiths, Woburn House, Ondo, Titan, Throne Of Katarsis, Utlagr and more, and the oddly monickered Bosnia fit right in. Hailing from Denver Colorado, this trio specialize in filthy, downtuned blackened doom crust, equal parts, Neurosis, His Hero Is Gone and other purveyors of gritty doomic filth, but these guys also inject some serious blackness into their crush and pummel. Woozy clean guitar parts wrap around tribal drumming, before launching into a lurching sprawl of blown out doom-ed black buzz, the vocals a monstrous guttural howl, the arrangements complex and a bit mathy, with stretches of lumbering chug bookending chunks of funereal slow motion crawl, leading straight into awesomely tangled obtuse melodic breakdowns, before exploding into raw feral bursts of punkish blackened pound.
Bosnia might be a bit too punk for the more troo grim metal hordes, but folks who dig shit like Kylesa, Baroness, Minsk, Damad and even sludgier shit like Eyehategod and the like, will probably dig this BIG time.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!
Full length number three from this mysterious SF black metal horde (who are rumored to share a drummer with SF true metal legends Slough Feg), and their grim blackened buzz meets nineties style post rock hybrid seems to still be in full effect, but this time around they've managed to more seamlessly integrate the two sides of their sonic personality. Where on past records, the schism between clean guitar post rock lope and blasting blackened buzz was pretty distinct, the transitions more abrupt, here, the band seem much more comfortable switching from sound to sound, the best moments being when the blackness bleeds over into the post rock, and vice versa, and that change is all over III, the band unfurling epic blasts of buzzing blackened post rock epicness, and infusing their grim buzz with rhythmic mesmer, and strange haunting spoken word, it definitely makes for a more fully formed and full realized sound.
And on past records, it also took the group a while for the black metal element to assert itself, the group spending much of their time in post rock / math rock territory, but here, the opening track explodes immediately into some frenzied mathy blackened buzz, the sound immediately displaying the above mentioned hybridization, sure there's frenzied riffing and blasting beats, but the sound is soaring and melodic, and the drumming is not just a blast beat, it's wild and insanely chaotic, some of the most amazing drumming we've heard in a while, and that too is all over the record. But all that said, the band still do love to bring it down, and sprawl out into moody minimalism, just check out the gorgeous "Cells", with its spare slowcore guitar, and martial snare, all beneath more spoken word, the melodies chiming, the Slint comparisons more than apt in cases like this, but these guys do it so well, and the band are never that far off from exploding into some frenzied and mathy blackness, those parts making this probably the most black metal sounding of any of the BDN records. But having said that, the heaviness is shot through with loads of melody, and reminds us more of stuff like Fell Voices and Sleepwalker and Deafheaven and Cold Body Radiation and the like, soaring, melodic, buzzy post black metal, that manages to be catchy and sort of pretty but still buzzy and brutal and heavy. And pretty goddamn great.
We should also mention the lyrics, which are amazing, not at all lyric-like, more like short flash fiction, just check out the lyrics to "The Arborist":
"You have disregarded the advice of your friends and entered an accord with the Arborist. He brings you to his special garden at the center of which is a circle of trees. Next to each tree is a sort of well that is meant to receive a person. You will be placed in one of these holes with only your head above the earth. For several weeks you will engage in intense mediation on your novel existence. However, you will eventually grow anxious and restless. Others will come and take their places in the holes near you. You will find it easy to befriend them, but as the months pass you will begin to bicker and experience jealousy. At length, the affinity you feel for your tree becomes something which you cannot express and you will form a union which excludes all others. Soon after, young roots will find you and brush against your most tender places."
Wow. So nuts. We were convinced there was no way that was what he was actually singing, and when we listened close we couldn't discern enough from the raspy vokills, but then suddenly the song shifted, and the vocals changed to a cleaner, spoken word style, and lo and behold, those were in fact the actual lyrics. And all the tracks are like that. Genius!
Hailing from right here in the Bay Area, this mysterious black metal horde recorded this, their debut, way back in 2007, and, except maybe for a few demo cassettes back then, it's only finally seeing the light of day now, which is a shame, cuz this utterly rules, some of the weirdest, coolest, most idiosyncratic black metal ever, a killer mix of Slint like post rock, grim true blackness, and blown out shoegazey drift, it's hard to imagine that most aQ metalheads wouldn't totally lose their shit over these guys, we sure did. And we know nothing about this band, who they are, where they're from exactly, why this record took 3+ years to come out, and how the fuck a band this cool and weird could remain so far and so long under the radar. Well, we're just glad this record is finally getting the attention it deserves. And that we an finally gush about this incredible, fucked up and far out slab of outsider blackness.
The record begins with the very Slintish "Marie", Spiderland guitars, simple spare drumming, lots of space, the only hint of blackness is the tortured vocals, draped over the song's skeletal framework, loping, hypnotic, mysterious, haunting, it's not until 2 minutes in that the blackness drops, frantic double kick, frenzied riffage, and the vocals, seriously tortured and anguished, but even then the minor key post rock vibe manages to still run through the rest of the track, and hell, the rest of the record. The track finishes off with a cool stretch of processed feedback, before launching into the second part of the 'Marie' suite, "Marie Pissed Upon The Count", a seriously frenzied black metal blowout, the vocals just incredible, emotional, not shrieked, more a guttural howl, the whole song manages to be almost a single extended blast, except for a brief respite part way through, where the band slips back into that Slinty lope, but just for a moment. And then there's the untitled third track, that is ridiculously melodic, hazy and shoegazey and washed out, still buzzy, but the melody is so weirdly sunshiney, and the song does eventually transform into something way more fierce and black, but that dreamy vibe infuses the whole track, a weird grim / glowing hybrid. And so it goes, the whole record is a constant sonic exploration, draping those sinister demonic vokills over pretty spidery guitar jangle, sending insectoid riffing into soaring swells of surprisingly major key melodies, injecting weird mathy almost progginess into long stretches of contemplative drift, while much of this sounds like classic Norwegian style blackness, lots of it sounds like some nineties math rock band, imagine a Don Cab / Darkthrone hybrid, or A Minor Forest crossed with Mutiilation, or some sort of Slint / Alcest / Burzum blend, the record lurches and swings from harsh heaviness to melodic lope and back again, finishing off with a long stretch of looped guitar and minimal drumming, that manages to be way more powerful and intense than a blown out black blast closer, which is precisely why this record is so special, and so fucking incredible. And even though technically this is from 2007, there's no way this isn't another black metal of the year contender...
Record number two from this mysterious Bay Area black metal horde, a group whose sound is as heavy on the Louisville math rock is it is on the black buzz, and on record number two, they stretch out even further, exploring their math/post rock tendencies in ways that were only hinted at on the first record. And as one might expect, the mix of black buzz and meandering post rockisms sounds much more organic this time around, where as the first time the separation between the two sounds was more jarring. The production is much improved too.
Just take the opening track, "Volume Two Chapter One", with its darkly dynamic opening, all start stop minor key minimalism, a melancholy minor key melody played out over a series of chords, left to ring out, the drums crashing in time, the only hint of the blackness to come is a howled vocals way way off in the distance, it's two minutes before this crashing moodiness segues fairly smoothly into some frantic blackened blasting, the drums not your typical blastbeat, instead offering up all manner of unlikely fills, the result a little off kilter, and a good balance to the otherwise more traditional back buzz guitar and shrieked vox. And then with about 2 minutes to go, the buzz seems to dissipate leaving just a churning, chuggy chunk of palm muted math rock, that sounds more like Don Cab than Darkthrone, pounding out the final minute in a tangle of mathy rhythms.
The post rockisms are much more subtle in "Marie In A Cage", which plays more like your standard buzzing blackness, but there are those wild chaotic drums, not to mention a killer part midsong where the band switch into a brief bit of proggy mathiness that KILLS, but it's brief and soon the band are galloping along again, never fully shedding that mathiness, but instead incorporating it into the black buzz. "The Lampless Hours" is another track that starts out sounding like some lost mid nineties Touch And Go record (minus the flurries of double kick drum), before launching into a stretch of 'proper' black metal. "The Death Posture" is a churning doomy plod, peppered with burst of blasting black metal, and again here, the band are much more subtle with their deployment of post and math rock elements, which ultimately makes for some truly idiosyncratic black metal. And finally, the record finishes off with the 11+ minute "Why Am I So Lovely? Because My Master Washes Me.", which again sounds on the surface traditionally blackened and buzzy, but the post rock undercurrent seems to seep through every chance it gets, finally shouldering the blackness out of the way at about the midway point for a stretch of gnarled mathiness, that manages to not sound out of place, instead, it's drawn in shades of black, that make it that much easier for the band to slip back into the furious buzz that finishes off the record, until the last minute when the recording seems to go haywire, everything blown out and distorted finishing off in a wild squall of Merzbowian white noise.
Definitely less post rocky than its predecessor, but again, the trade off is that the post rock element doesn't sound as much like a gimmick, instead sounding more an actual intrinsic part of BdN's sound, and while black metal dabblers may not be so inclined this time around (although they should be), true grim metalheads might just find their horizons being expanded, whether they realize it or not.
We got a handful of super limited-run shirts from SF eco-terrorist, drum and dulcimer, one man black metal band Botanist, featuring the super striking cover art from his third album, Doom In Bloom, M.S. Waldron's depiction of the demon Azalea. It features the Botanist logo on the back. Printed on American Apparel shirts, black with a white print. Limited to 100 shirts total!
