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NO

Spike Sidor
Boris No Review Album Cover

BORIS

2020 PUNK/DOOM-METAL/HARDCORE

NO is, according to Wikipedia, the twenty-sixth album for Japanese experimental metal trio Boris. The band has made numerous ventures into the subgenres of metal, but mainly grinding out records in the scope of doom, and drone. Their signatures are massive sludgy guitars playing out glacially hypnotic grooves and freakish noisy chaos, but they can just as easily create more traditional infectious varieties of metal. While it’s certain that Boris have released more than a few celebrated LPs, it’s been a very long time since I walked away from a deep listen with even moderate enjoyment; hell I would say it’s been fifteen years going all the way back to the seminal Pink, expectations have never been lower.  NO is wholly unlike any of Boris’s past decade of releases not only stylistically, it is good, and not just regular everyday Boris did a nice job with this one good, its electrifying, they are completely creatively reinvigorated, as if a day has not gone by since they dropped Akuma no Uta or Feedbacker, NO ranks among them as one of their finest.

The album opens with Genesis, an expansive and lumbering affair that features a steely ambient atmosphere that sounds like a cold wind whispering through a haunted wood, heavy guitars laying down brutal riffs with slow progression and the sporadic percussion with deep bass hits and cymbal crashes create mammoth walls of tension, it’s the classic Boris routine but it sounds so terrific. At its close everything but the guitars drop out and we transition into the next song, Anti-Gone, rolling drum fills and steadily rising pillars of noise rush in, then abruptly the guitar slides with an ecstatic whirr, this is not turning out to be a typical doom project. A burst of driving punky guitars fly through the feedback and energetic shouted vocals create a really catchy track. Temple of Hatred starts with a low droning guitar that baits the listener in, then the door is immediately blown open and everyone in the room is murdered. The guitars come thick and fast with loads of feedback and rapid fire drumming, shouted vocals and backing vocals that deliver some “woah-ohs” come in. In the short two minutes Boris reach every speed imaginable, flailing furiously in all directions.

Zerkalo lowers the pace but it is certainly not a break in the action, hulking electric guitars and dry wretched delivery that remind me of the vocals on the Unwound track Scarlette of all things. The pounding march of this song provides for an excellent base and lulls the listener in for the next savage ambush. HxCxHxC begins with a dreamy reverb drenched guitar that is, dare I say pleasant. It doesn’t last as abrasive guitars pour down with emphatic punk drum beats. The vocals come with more effects to match its new surroundings and the hazy feedback that floated in the background eventually builds up to quickly close out the song. Kikinoue is as nasty as it gets, drums roil at a blistering pace with the heaviest and most disgusting riff on record quaking underneath. It’s beyond action packed, it’s hard to believe it’s all jammed into the two minute runtime, I especially love the climax with the tandem vocals shouting the song title, KIKINOUE! Lust isn’t a terrible outing but not entirely memorable, fat chugging guitar riffs drive the song forward with a so-so drum beat, the most fascinating aspect is the odd sounds spattered throughout, a sample of wind, quick low robotized vocals, a few squealing high pitched guitar notes, it doesn’t add up to much, a tad half-finished.

Fundamental Error is a cover of a nineties Japanese hardcore track and you can tell from the get go with the old-school electric guitar riff and furious yells on the traditional verse chorus verse. I’m not familiar with the original but Boris paint the walls red with their signature style, the rhythm guitars are wicked and all kinds of wonderfully awful feedback skirts around the core structure. Loveless opens with a catchy guitar riff that is like if a pop-punk band plugged their guitars into the wrong amps; things are played pretty straight and purely instrumentally until about a minute and a half where the track suddenly remembers its mad as hell. Guitars trade lines back and forth until a surprisingly bright lick dishes out irresistible warbling riffs, Takeshi and Atsuo then exchange blistering yells until joining in a perfect fiery unison.

The energy fades and thundering doom metal guitars enter the picture with downcast vocals to guide the song to its conclusion and what should have been the album’s conclusion but there is the bizarre track titled Interlude. It’s not only the name that makes this track bad as a closer, it is opposite sonically of almost everything that has happened thus far, it’s a weepy ambient piece with atmospheric synths, crystalline echoing guitars, and whispered femme vocals. This song belongs to a different band or at least a separate album, it’s a mediocre interlude from a Mono album that got drunk, stumbling through studio space in Tokyo until it miraculously landed on this release of all things. The ending and gripes that I have on a few tracks such as Non Blood Lore being way too by the numbers and Lust being a half done mess notwithstanding NO is a stellar late career highlight; a total barn burner from front to back.  Even in their middle ages, Boris can still deliver jarring kicks to the head.

8/10

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