Thank God for Boris. Hearing this band play live makes my bones vibrate in exactly the right way. Boris is from Japan, and they’re just getting ready to set out on tour with Nine Inch Nails. These guys make some tunes that are hard to pigeonhole. Their style swings violently from mood to mood, stopping to play around with sounds of metal, drone, shoegaze, punk, and very loud psychedelic rock. Their newest album, Smile (like the Brian Wilson Album in name only) dropped a few short months ago and effortlessly shows off a great deal of the diversity that Boris is constantly expanding upon. The men in the band; ridiculously awesome drummer Atsuo and no less awesome bass guitar/lead vocalist Takeshi bring a raw energy to the stage that is a force to be reckoned with, but it’s the guitarist (and only female band member) Wata who keeps things from falling into the abyss.
The band took things down about 10 notches in the middle of their set to play “Rainbow,” the only song that Wata sings lead vocals on, and you could feel the crowd and all of the Uno’s Pizza customers take their first breath in about thirty minutes. Even if loud music isn’t your thing, this is the kind of song that makes you stop and ask someone about who’s playing. “Rainbow” is sort of an extended hand from the band to the audience, a simplified introduction like a puzzle piece revealed, or at least it seems this way until the guitar solo from Takeshi comes screaming out its shoegazey, film noir-ish surroundings, reminding you once again of what you’re listening to. The song served as the eye of the storm, only giving us a brief chance to catch up with ourselves before quickly being swept away again by gong banging and writhing guitars. Here is a video of the song from a Knitting Factory that I couldn’t get into a bit earlier this year:
DOWNLOADS
Boris – Furi
i want to smash my soul on your brain
