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BORIS Akuma No Uta CD |
| Southernlords' favorite, and most excellent Japanese power trio; BORIS are back with another offering from their eclectic catalog. Akuma No Uta is a 39 minute, six song album that offers up a variety of styles from past Boris albums, drawing from the heavier-than-thou rumble of Absolutego and Amplifier Worship (both previously released on Southern Lord), to the exquisite beauty of Flood, and the sheer jams-out-kickin' of Heavy Rocks. |
| Southern Lord Records (2005) NEW / UNPLAYED / SEALED IN SHRINKWRAP |
| Domestic release |
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[PLOT SUMMARY]
DESCRIPTION:
Don't be fooled by the Nick Drake pastiche cover; Boris are purveyors of dirty,XXXX rock/dronecore that is both experimental and skull crushingly intense. Previously unavailble outside of their native Japan, 'Akuma No Uta' sees Boris winding their guitars taut and their double neck electric bass'even tighter. With a sound that is more accesible than many of their peers, Boris employ a wider pallate that looks beyond the metal origins of the genre (see 'Introduction's shoegazing overtones) and in doing so brings a much wider audience to their records. So whilst 'Ibitsu' and 'Furi' are shouty and shambolic punk rock, 'Naki Kyoku' prefers to shrug off the power chords and paddle in some early Mogwai post-rock providing the record with a much needed spectrum of styles.
Brand new re-issue of yet another masterwork of heavy duty, Japanese feedback/drone/metal bliss from the mighty (and mighty popular!) BORIS. Six songs in 39 minutes of heavier-than-god riff-rumble, glacial instrumental beauty, and jacked up, blown-out rock destruction, with riffs so big they blot out the sun. Everything everyone loves about Boris is in full force here: the EARTH worship meets riff-overdrive motorcrunch of "Ibitsu". The epic grinding sludge of the title track. The languid psyche/"post rock" of "Naki Kyoku". Psych-punk-sludge riots on steroids and run through a mountain of Marshall amps. Crushing. Digipack packaging. Starting off with a Earth-esque drone-metal intro the record then slams into the riffed-out, noisy stormer "Ibitsu". Distorted, manic, tear-shit-up stuff. After another song in the same Hendrix meets the Stooges style psych-punk rawk vein, Boris switch gears again, for the album's centerpiece, a twelve-minute opus entitled "Naki Kyoku" that begins all super languid, quiet and pretty before building into a soaring psychedelic jam. The jams continue on the next track, another in the red Garage stompin' blow-out. Finally, title track "Akuma No Uta" winds things up with a return to the immense sludge grind of track one, melded into a headbanging groove, ending the disc on an adrenaline high.
REVIEW FROM MUSIC EMIISSIONS: After reading about one of my new favorite bands, Jesu, I ended up reading some comparisons to that of Boris, the Japanese sludge rock band that is supposedly legendary. Akuma No Uta has been picked up by Southern Lord giving hard rock fans a slightly better chance of finding this album. If you do find it, pick it up--it is worth it. The production is messy as hell but on a metal album of this magnitude it doesn't matter. Boris is named after a track on the Melvins' Bullhead album and they do take a lot of influence from these Americans. On some of the tracks they give us those bass sounds that make you think your speakers are going to be blown. They are thick and muddy and trudging for the most part ("Introduction") but in other areas of Akuma No Uta Boris picks the pace up and gives us some full on rockers ("Furi"). They also slow things down for almost three minutes on "Naki Kyoku", quite a peaceful song, only to be hit with that bottom heavy sounds again on "Ano Onna No Onryou". Akuma No Uta is a cool find. Look for Amplifier Worship and Flood as well but this album is a nice combination of everything that Boris is about. Who knew that the Japanese could rock this hard? It almost puts Kyuss to shame.
REVIEW FROM FOXY DIGITALIS: The Southern Lord performs yet another miracle with the domestic issue of sludge behemoth Boris’s “Akuma no Uta.” This album is almost middle of the road for the doom trio, divided between mind cleansing trance workouts (monolithic opener “Introduction”), stomping punk metal (“Ibitsu,” “Furi”) and at least one epic buildup in centerpiece “Naka Kyoko” aka “Nothingness Song.” It goes from a sedated melody to phenomenal heavy psych jamming, with headphones ready feedback flourishes, before ending up on an exultant plane of groove catharsis. And the closing title track is four minutes of the kind of hellsludge that made them gods in the first place, sounding like the Melvins crashing through a wrought iron fence.
REVIEW FROM DUSTED MAGAZINE : The mighty Boris return with their latest delivery of blissfully heavy rock. The 40 minutes of Akuma No Uta may offer the widest range of any Boris release, making this perhaps the best introduction to the band for those who haven't yet taken the plunge. The six songs span 40 minutes total, which is actually a very reasonable length given the depth and heaviness here. Any more might just be wasted on us all. The aptly-titled "Intro" is a full 10 minutes long, starting things off with a beautiful slow-motion crunchy riff, all low-end fuzz that ebbs and flows at a glacial pace. A higher siren call fades in slowly, piercing through the dense gloom until clouds of crackling sound infiltrate, then fade away, then return until amp hum threatens to take over and suddenly we're in the next song, "Ibitsu," an intense three minutes of crashing fuzz-rock with a Mudhoney vibe if there were three Mudhoneys playing simultaneously. Slamming drums, screaming guitars, and Iggy-on-speed vocals. "Furi" follows with, generally, more of the same. This is the one song on here which seems a bit redundant; not that it's bad, not at all, but it doesn't quite stand out amidst its brethren. "Naki Kyoku" is the mountain in the middle of this album, a 12-minute journey through a complete vocabulary of psychedelia. Slow, pretty reverbed guitar leads us into a kraut groove dominated by a flowing, never-ending lead. The guitar unexpectedly turns clean, while Echoplex textures wobble in the background before we're pulled down into a maelstrom of blazing guitar, crashing drums, and impassioned vocals. I can see some Boris fans puzzling about the relative lightness of "Naki Kyoku" but hopefully open minds will prevail and they'll see it for the complete picture it is. The song isn't simply 12 minutes of sections tacked together – there's a cohesion to it, as elements enter while others fade away, and it's all pinned together by the guitar. From the start to the end, it's all aiming for the big blowout, and the band delivers as promised – it's all worth the wait, which isn't something you can say about every 12-minute song. After that, "Ano Onna No Onryou" and the title track take us through more massive riffing. From an ideal combination of psych overload and plain old rock, essential air guitar material, to slow-motion sludge that pulls the rug out from under you as it transforms into headbanging high gear, the album finishes on a very strong note. These 40 minutes include both peaks and valleys, glacial drone and high-speed riffing, together with unexpected moments of beauty and spacious grooves.
REVIEW FROM DECIBEL MAGAZINE: Such genius. These dudes clearly have some sort of shrine to King Buzzo that they sacrifice virgins or pictures of Joe Preston to—a troll doll holding a tiny Les Paul, maybe? Such is their brilliant absorption, transliteration, and revision of the Melvins’ thing. For whole messes of albums and collaborations, Boris have established themselves as one of the premier sludge/doom acts around, and Akuma No Uta simply ups the ante. Take the album cover, a tribute not to Sabbath, not to Black Flag, not even to the Melvins, but to Nick Drake’s Bryter Layter. Then comes a half-hour of near perfection, rolodexing the Boris skillset. They get their epic rumble on, they get spaced out and lovely, they kick garage-punk ass.Perfect. The opening drone lasts 10 minutes; all the better to lull you into a false sense of murk. Then “Ibitsu” and “Furi” cut way the f**k loose with scuzzy, chaotic distorto-riffs slamming into sloppy punk beats. Garage rockers everywhere should cower in fear. (Hell, High on Fire could learn a thing or two here.) But then comes the lovely, 12-minute “Naki Kyoku,” a few moments of beauty bleeding into old school psych-rock tripology. Then more ass-pounding metal punk. Then back to the sludge. The circle is complete, pointing straight back to the beginning. You find the superbong, the special occasion-bong, the one shaped like a dragon, and start over. This is bliss.
REVIEW FROM VILLAGE VOICE: The cover of Japanese drone-metal trio Boris's new Akuma No Uta is such a dead-on pastiche of Nick Drake's Bryter Layter that a glimpse of it is likely to inspire even the most rabid Drake fan to sigh, "Christ, they're reissuing this again?" The sort-of joke starts kicking in when one notices that the cover's Drake sit-in, Boris bassist-vocalist Takeshi, is holding a double-necked bass/guitar. The band, which leads a double life as design firm Fangs AnalSatan, keeps its homage visual. The obvious affinity to infer is that drone metalists are sad just like Drake was, but it's worth remembering that Bryter was the folkie's most chipper album, and the thing about Akuma's brisk alternation of feedback fests, thrash throwaways, and mini-Zep flourishes is how much fun it is—Takeshi, guitarist Wata (she of the imposing orange Orange amp), and drummer Atsuo make no effort to hide how much they enjoy making their racket. Hence, those who gravitate to extreme metal hoping for a continuation of certain contemporary classical practices (Xenakis's extreme noise, Lamonte Young's trance generators) by other means may find Boris a trifle lightweight. Still, sometimes one prefers a psychic palate cleanser to a full-on brain eraser.
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Hey! Don't forget to check out all of our other CRUCIAL BLAST -approved AVANT METAL / MUTANT NOISE releases in our Ebay store and on auction. Lots of OOP and RARE items too, for all you collector trogs!! |
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[CONDITION+INFO]
BRAND NEW, UNPLAYED ITEM STILL SEALED IN SHRINKWRAP. Picture is an actual scan of item. | |
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| >> WE DEAL IN HEAVY JAMS << |
CRUCIAL BLAST is an independant underground label and mailorder specializing in cutting edge, "experimental" heavy music from the indie universe with a particular focus on avant-Metal, heavy mutant noise and drones, and edgy/abrasive/weird "outsider" rock and pop. You'll find everything from art-damaged European metalcore to amplifier-exploding psychedelic drones in our listings, which we update every week. We like our sounds weird, and we like 'em heavy. You're not going to find the popular flavor-of-the-month "alternative" music here...these are new mutations in extreme music.
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