On their landmark 2006 LP Pink, Japan’s Boris are all over the place, delving into more metal genres than you can count and topping them off with a pair of ambient tracks. It would be downright disorienting if their fallback song strategy weren’t breakneck fast and furious. And noisy. Pink has been praised for being more melodic than Boris’ previous work. Melodic, I don’t hear.
How all over the place is Boris? The genres mentioned in association with Pink include doom metal, sludge metal, stoner rock, thrash, ambient, hardcore, garage punk, garage rock, noise prog, dream pop, post-metal, and post-rock. That’s a formidable laundry list, and I don’t hear all of them. In fact, I don’t hear most of them. What I hear is a metal band with a love for thrash who like to throw mucho dissonant freak guitar into the mix.
What I also hear is an album that metal fans, especially those who love frenetic guitars, jet engine noise, and hypersonic tempos, should love. And I was pleased to discover they even have a song that reminds me of Minneapolis’s psycho noise rock band Cows.
Genres I don’t hear: Norwegian death disco, thrash folk ambient, Serbo-Canadian techno-polka, and I could go on. I also searched in vain for Donnie Osmond screamo or a speed freak post-rock cover of Pentangle’s “Let No Man Steal Your Thyme.” Boy, does lead singer Jacqui McShee have hypnotic bug eyes!
Boris has recorded with plenty of people and groups, including the Cult’s Ian Astbury, drone metal gods Sunn O))), the acquired taste that is Keiji Haino, Merzbow, fellow “everything but the kitchen sink” genre-mixers Coaltar of the Deepers (they’re Japanese, have covered the Cure and Prince, and what else do you need to know?), and others.
Opener “Farewell” and penultimate track “My Machine” are both likable forays into ambient music, and the reason I say likable is they’ve got slightly more going on than your average slight ambient track. They’re not built on a single bamboo shoot, self-effacing koto, and distant chimes. And they have built.
The Boris that released Pink included Takeshi on vocals, bass, and guitar; Wata on guitar, echo, and sound effects; and Atsuo on drums and percussion, and they produce quite a din for a trio.
“Blackout” opens with Atsuo smashing the drums like Bonham until the guitar comes in, slow but howling like a stevedore, and I guess this is what people call doom rock. Then the guitar (guitars) really wail, while Takeshi does some talking. THEN the guitars really head into the stratosphere, leaving a contrail of feedback behind them, and I have a sneaking suspicion that the band purchases their guitars at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena.
The appropriately titled “Electric” also features JPL-engineered axes, and is a thing of wonder—a noise-thrash monster truck of a song with more Atsuo drum mayhem and a guitar freakout followed by Takeshi attempting to out-howl the Boris-produced flash flood, which will wash away every psychic bridge in your mind. Then the axes really whoop, scream, and holler, and if you’ve got a dam in your area, I suggest you make for high ground.
“Nothing Special” is all rumbling bass and Takeshi screaming about something, all taken very fast with the guitar going wild in the background. It’s not nothing special but it’s nothing very special, but “Pseudo Bread” is—you get more guitar shriek, Takeshi serves up monotone vocals, then an interlude saunters along that is all guitar squall before Takeshi returns to his monologue and the guitars churn all around him.
“Afterburner” isn’t exactly “Afterburner” fast—what it is is a heavy metal drone that has more Black Sabbath than ZZ Top in it. Takeshi’s vocals are all echo, while the drums and guitars stomp across your living room floor like Godzilla, on his way to pulverize vital local infrastructure.
Despite its title, “Six, Three Times” is more Seitan than Satanic. It’s hardcore that breaks all the rules and ends in chaos. “Woman on the Screen” is speedy guitars, with Takashi singing up a storm with lots of asides, while a truly sprung guitar break explodes in your face. Impressible.
“Just Abandoned Myself” is all howling guitar going Bonneville Salt fast while Takashi’s phrasing sounds uncannily like that of Cows’ on-stage genius Shannon Selsberg. Meanwhile, Wata throws in some electronic effects that go on and on, rising and falling over guitar mayhem and sounding like electricity gone terribly wrong/right.
“Pink” is thrash metal with lots of discordant guitar noise, and Takashi serves up an Iggy-style scream early on, while the guitars whoop and then move to the background as Takashi sings. It’s the most complex song on the LP, with lots of back and forth between the vocals and the menacing guitars, but the song goes out on a straight-up guitar riff that doesn’t end.
Pink isn’t Boris’ straight-up heavy metal album. Their 2002 metal opus Heavy Friends (the first of three Boris albums to bear that title) is more than likely to have the most appeal to your headbangers (it’s HEAVY indeed). But it lacks the sheer weirdness and the faster-than-fast noise-rock guitar tempos.
Pink is more likely to appeal to noise rockers, even if it’s not, properly speaking, a noise rock record. Still, Boris’ heart belongs to metal. They love more than anything to rock out.
All metal fans owe it to themselves to buy this record. Or some Serbo-Canadian techno-polka. I recommend Bobby Howl and the Polka Assassins’ new one, Lake Ontario Calling.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
A
