EXPERIMENTAL/POST METAL

This review makes some general observations on the album, and henceforth comments track by track.

My first observation is about something I truly admire on a band: their ability to make an album different from their usual style. "Alba" is a symphonic prog effort, sometimes pastoral, sometimes eclectic. Radically distinct from their other releases, that are experimental/post metal.

There's this good distribution and precise amount of narration and singing, most of the part in english. But you'll also get plenty of spanish and french, and they do it splendidly, as on their previous works. But this time there's no screaming or throat singing anywhere, what is occasionally done on the other albums. With great sensitivity and maturity, the instruments give space to each other and to the vocals. Therefore, you can clearly here the notes and harmonies. The mood is very good or even brilliant on all compositions. The first track begins with acoustic guitar, narrations, and what seems as a cross between theremin and citar; maybe it's generated by a combination of charango and acoustic guitar, and/or by sound engineering. An amazing sound. When vocalist starts to sing, it's in english; not so incredible. The execution has a cadence that allows the listener to follow and absorb each note. A penetrating female lament appears. 7,5/10.

Spanish vocals introduce next track. The rythym is not so absorbing and memorable, it even gets a little repetitive. But singing is very intense. A fabulous tune on acoustic guitar is performed on the middle of the song. The end of the track presents a gloomy mood with narration in french. 6,5/10.

Third track has 2min. Develops smooth and slow tunes on the piano, and what seems some slide effects on guitar. Goes very deep on my heart. 9,5/10.

Track 4 presents what seems to be a double bass, with low/strong tones. An acoustic guitar with a metallic sound dialogues to a fabulous feminine narration, in spanish. Seems to evoke painful memories. When the second acoustic guitar comes along, they undertake a stimulating rythym. Unexpected changes of harmonies and tones happens, on all instruments. Drums here have more density and accelaration. 9/10.

Next track is not so creative and amusing as the two previous, and doesn't seem to fit very well as a continuation of the album. Considering the fact that this disc has an extention of 74 min, if this track was excluded (or properly edited/summarized and included on the previous track) it would maybe work better. 6/10.

What astonishing harmonies are performed on 6th track! It's even hard to describe, but I guarantee that you'll hear many switches, without startles, of harmonies and cadences. I can also add that they use all the string acoustic instruments, and their technique is at its peak on this part of the disc. The english vocals are even better. All this together, with a melancholic narration in spanish, doesn't let me no doubts that it deserves 10.

A latin flavour is present on 7th track. A gentle harmony, and measured notes make this 3min composition a counterpoint to the introspective and melancholic tone of many previous snippets. 7,5/10.

Next track sounds kind of post-rock. Some beatiful phrases on acoustic guitar, and an evolving drumming and singing delivers a pleasant mood to this song. 8/10.

Mixing electroacoustic music with acoustic guitar, the brief 9th track presents another facet of the band's creative qualities. 8,5/10.

Last track is the longest of the album. The introduction is performed only with an acoustic guitar and vocals. It's a bit repetitive and confusing. When some layers are added with other instruments, the phrasings and harmonies get a little better. From halfway onwards, acoustic guitar and drums get repetitive again. The end of this composition looks like another track. Making it sound awkward. 6/10.

For the originality of the proposal, centralizing the compositions on acoustic guitar, and the combinations it can get with drums and vocal, I'll add 0,5 to my final note. 4.8. on a five-star scale.

This album took on a more melodic songwriting approach than many BORIS albums have. The trio successfully added some catchy tunes to create their fuzzed out doomy atmospheric magic around. The songs range from spacy post-metal that is slow and breezy to super aggressive dissonant yet bluesy heavy psych. There is feedback galore amongst punky rockers and hypnotic repetitive riffs. The last track on my version "Just Abandoned Myself" is a staggering 18 minute plus drony, doomy delight that manages to incorporate the only Japanese sound on the whole album with a samisen or some other Eastern stringed instrument into the mix. If you are looking for some totally spacey, fuzzy and feedback sludge psych then you can't go wrong with PINK, yet another winner from BORIS.

Forging a melting pot that includes doom metal, sludge metal, stoner metal and even thrash metal styles mixed with ambient, post-hardcore, garage punk, noise prog, dream pop and post-rock, BORIS continued to up its game on PINK by finding a new way to add new elements to its basic drone metal recipe. PINK has become a cult classic and one of the more popular releases of the massive BORIS canon. A deluxe version exists with nine extra tracks called "Forbidden Songs." Given the spaced out intangible nature of much of BORIS' music, these tracks are hard to latch onto but provide a fascinating psychedelic construct fueled with guitar fuzz and various strains of metal heft. The album has been lauded and described as a burst of contagious energy fused with mesmerizing atmosphere. PINK remains a fascinating exploration of experimental from the early 2000s.

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.

This entire album is basically one 60:15 long (65:34 on the ABSOLUTEGO+ edition) ripple through feedback and fuzz with a slow pulsating rhythmic march that sounds like a stoned Godzilla prowling the countryside looking for munchies as the feedback twists and morphs and extends to infinity and back to create quite disturbing sonicscapes that eke out all the dread and awe that this type of music was made for.

As the hypnotic rhythm marches on, the fuzz thickens and the percussion slowly evolves until around the half hour mark a cacophonous drum frenzy simulates the chaos of a falling building after a Japanese earthquake or something and then reverts back into the pacified feedback and fuzz march once again. Throughout the album the sounds are jarring and sound like the listener is under the rotating blades of a lawnmower on the verge of being ripped to shreds but never actually going there and only sustaining the impending doom to come.

This is definitely not for the faint of heart as there is no traditional song structure and is pretty much a parade through sonic torture of sort. As drone metal isn't my favorite type of metal on the scene there are some true standouts and this introduction to the Japanese noise scene combined with jarring metal sounds is one of the best out there. I recommend the edition with the bonus track "Dronevil 2" which is a mere 7:50 in length but adds a different quieter drone ending to the album that doesn't rely on fuzzy guitars and more on an undulating bass line that reverbs so low it sounds like the subwoofer is gonna explode.

Despite this release of one track that extends past the 60 minute mark, the band itself considers it a single and has been deemed as such. Personally anything over 30 minutes long is an album in my book!

Feedbacker is one of the many masterpieces by Japanese eclectic metal band Boris. Listening to this album feels like being lost in fog/ a wall of sound especially the intro track, the song being a 9 minute build up to the rest of the album it may seem long but it's worth it. Part 2 has a more traditional Post Rock type sound going on and one of the most emotional sounding guitar solos I've ever heard, at the 8:14 timestamp the guitar solo starts and man it's something, I'd say it's just as emotional as Watermelon In Easter Hay or Maggot Brain. Part 3 is a full on Punk song, a genre the band will experiment with every now and then. Part 4 goes for an almost Blackgaze sound before the fifth and final part that is just the ending track that calms the suite down. Really I don't know what else to say, this album is beautiful and is essentially a combination of all the bands previous sounds, if your new with Boris then I heavily recommend you start here

I always feel Townsend sounds so much better when he has a female singer to pitch against as his music is so bass heavy, and Dorval is an absolute delight ? while I admit I love Anneke Van Giersbergen, Dorval is a wonderful substitute. Her vocals combined with the keyboards, placed against the rhythm section and guitars work incredibly well. Devin is always determined to have fun onstage, which is the only reason to include "Why" in a set, as it sounds as if it belongs in a Disney musical as opposed to a heavy gig, and he loves getting the crowd to join in with their best death metal growls. After they complete "Hyperdrive", Devin announces he heard someone shout for "Earth Day", but the band don't know it. So he starts playing the riff, and the rest of the band just follow ? it may not be perfect but it sure is a lot of fun and one can just hear the smiles. One can imagine the band wanting to go onto the stage every night as they have no idea what is going to happen, and I am sure Devin does not know either.

What on earth is the semi-acoustic "Ih-Ah!" doing in a live set? Because it is a blast, that's why, and the whole gig is a mish mash of styles so why not go from the sublime to the ridiculous and play "Love?" from my favourite SYL album, 'Alien'? Exactly my thoughts as well, even though Morgan is admittedly not a metal drummer. Townsend says this was one of his favourite tours, and although he has released a load of live albums over the years, and this is this is the third in the Devolution Series alone, once can hear how much fun both the bad and audience were having on this one as it blasts, it rocks, and everyone smiles.

1. "Embers" (1:01) very interesting and unique album opener! Acoustic guitars with choral vocals--sounding more like The Band or CSN&Y than I expected. (4.5/5)

2. "Last Word" (6:18) chugging metal with psychedelic engineering treatments. Reminds me of GRAND FUNK RAILROAD except on higher octane. You can tell that this is a well-oiled, well-gelled quartet. (I guess all those live performance dates really paid off!) Very interesting sound engineering choices--like with the drums and lead guitar. Less is more and yet the flange is ever-present, sneaking around in the background. Love it! Definitely feels like a blast from the past! Kudos to the team and their engineer/producer to go with these sound engineering choices. A top three song for me. (9/10)

3. "Beneath the Rose" (5:35) this one feels like a kind of TED NUGENT variation on Bono's performance in U2's "Bullet the Blue Sky"--at least for the verses. In the choruses the sound moves into a kind of cross between early URIAH HEEP and METALLICA's "Enter the Sandman." Nice vision and execution! The doubled-up guitar solo feels like a cross between THIN LIZZY and LYNYRD SKYNYRD. The final chorus spills over into Brit-territory--like The Clash or Judas Priest. (8.875/10)

4. "Choir" (4:06) bleeding over from the previous song, the guitars chug along as the continuous-play rolling bass note and straight-time drum race along. The vocals sound like some kind of channel of IGGY POP. I like the more nuanced, intermittent and atmospheric echo-guitar notes in the between-spaces. A very theatric, well-constructed and - executed song. Must be a crowd-pleaser in concert. (8.875/10)

5. "The Dirge" (1:19) another odd snippet that sounds as if it is more likely to come from Americana than metal. (4.3333/5)

6. "Anodyne" (3:20) To a person who's music ears were formed in the 1970s this sound palette sounds so right: none of the processing or compressing that is so common among post-1982 (enter the Computer/ Digital Age) bands and albums. Though this smooth hard rock song is smooth, it must be trying to rely more on its lyrics than previous songs cuz the music is less interesting--with less variation and development than I was expecting. (8.66667/10)

7. "Shine" (6:32) unfortunately, this rather straightforward "heavy metal" song sounds rather dull and elementary. Even the choruses and instrumental passages feel robotic and a bit "dialed-in." (8.5/10)

8. "Magnolia" (7:49) though I've been feeling this VANETA-vibe off and on throughout the course of this album, the opening 2:15 of this one carries a full-fledged imprint of that band. The song goes from waiting-at-the-curb to kick-it- into-gear at the 2:15 mark with some awesome multi-voice harmonic metal vocals over some pretty standard BLUE ÖYSTER CULT-like music. (Even the guitar solo in the sixth minute sounds 1970s). (Did they just say "flaming arrows"?!!) Still: it's a pretty damned-good song. (13.125/15)

9. "Under the Wheel" (6:11) I love the smooth-vocaled opening of this: so much potential energy present here just waiting to be released. And then they do! At 2:58 John Baizley unleashes a wicked-awesome vocal flight path (backed by some important seconds from Gina Gleason). Unfortunately, the song doesn't morph or develop much after that until the awesome spacey-fade. Still here we have another of my top three songs. (9/10)

10. "Bloom" (4:01) a gentle acoustic-guitar based song over which John and Gina sing the lead together, simultaneously, in harmony. Beautiful, smooth, laid-back harmonies. Nicely done. Great vocal performances. My final top three song. (8.875/10)

Total Time 46:12

I'm not sure how this band got categorized "Expeirmental/Post Metal" on ProgArchives cuz this all sounds quite rudimentary and retrogressive; perhaps their previous albums (with which I am unfamiliar) crossed into more experimental "post metal" territory.

Again, I want to commend the band on their choice to "real time"-record and render each song separately and uniquely. Exceptional cojones and will. (It really is so refreshing to hear new music that sounds like the old analog, pre- computer-manipulated music of my youth.)

B+/four stars; an excellent trip down a path that few 21st Century rockers are taking us down. Check it out for yourselves: highly recommended!