AKUMA NO UTA

AKUMA NO UTA (The Devil's Song) is the 5th album by the Japanese band BORIS and my first taste of this drone / sludge / doom metal band. One of the most perplexing impressions of this album was that the cover looks exactly like folk singer Nick Drake's album "Bryter Layter" except bassist / guitarist / vocalist Takeshi is displaying his double-neck Ibanez. It is intended to be a tribute and not a parody yet it is rather ironic since the highly distorted sonic stew that BORIS presents is as far away from the placid acoustic folk of Drake as you can get. The cover of the very first issue was a simple white cover with a simple doodle but the US version with Takeshi is the more common one.

I find this to be an exciting album that takes you on a ride through all the styles of metal that BORIS had been dabbling with on previous albums. "Introduction" is the first track which at a staggering length of 9:44 reminds us of the ambient drone metal of Earth. It is an intricate little piece that has more fuzz than a peach orchard. The rest of the album finds the band taking their garage band versions of sludge and punk and post-rock to interesting distorted levels. BORIS really knows how to mix the laid-back with the energetic pieces and add enough diverse elements to make a satisfying album from beginning to end. I've only dabbled in their discography up to this point, but albums like AKUMA NO UTA certainly beckon further exploration, and for anyone who likes the fuzziest sonicscapes out there, look no further than BORIS.

The original album featured a white background with a cartoon insect doodle on Diwphalanx Records and then later was released with the better known Nick Drake parody cover on Southern Lord Records, which BORIS has been most prominantly associated with. By this time BORIS had become quite unique in how it blended droning with stoner metal, psychedelic rock, garage punk, noise rock and even heavy psych. One of the band's more popular releases AKUMO NO UTA has also become one of the best known examples of competent drone metal which can be quite monotonous and rather boring. The canon of BORIS is a mess with many items featuring the same title and many tracks showing up on various releases with different versions. On this one the "Intro" is a different take on the Southern Lord version.