Friday, January 22, 2016

#2011 Boris - Noise

Can't keep Boris down. The sludge/noise/doom masters went alt-rock-pop on New Album (now their second-newest album), sounding "did you mislabel this, Spotify?" levels out of character.

From across the gap they've built a bridge backwards - their now-new album Noise is melodic and hooky and accessible (making Pink sound like Metal Machine Music), but it works in actual savagery, scale, experimentalism, and, well, noise, descending into waves of feedback for 5, 8, 15 minutes at a time, bringing the old stuff, the raw power, the bottomless descents, the walls of feedback death.

Is this phase 2 of a reboot? Was New Album an audience broadener and Noise a way to bring the two bases back together? Goddammit New Album, derailing this whole post from beyond the grave.

Noise is a great journey, all over the map, weaving hooks, melody, crushing weight, and epic length, totally unwilling to be pinned down. Its split personality keeps it from having an obvious role in your record collection, but when you're willing to let some brilliant guitar lords lead, you'd be hard pressed to find a more expansive tour 4/5

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