Impossibility and Tokyo’s Boris share the commonality of slow evolution into reality along with the respect that time, ever-so-slowly, crushes concrete into sand. The trio washes its twenty-five years of shape-shifting and hallucinogenic leaps between style and genre over Dear’s hour-long majesty and madness.
“D.O.W.N. -Domination Of Waiting Noise” might be an opening track so cruel in its beats-per-hour (BPH) crawl that it should carry a disclaimer: “Warning – contains actual recordings of glaciers gouging out valleys in towering mountain ranges.” Waiting for noise becomes a wait for anything to occur, until deep into the sludge you realize that you have been pulled into a trance by three shamans trampling your sensibilities like grapes.
Boris’ Takeshi, Wata and Atsuo are the singular nom de dooms of outlier metal that combines outrageous disrespect and brain-deadening magnificence for its listeners. With Wata’s arc-welding guitar on “Deadsong” cudgeled within the thorny imbalance of sound-curtains turning to stone that Takeshi imposes with guitar and doubled-bass, Boris of years back rekindle their greatness.
Dear is carved out from several albums worth of material, a rethink of “AbsoluteGo” and the hints of sparkle in the anthracite densities of “The Power” signal memories of Heavy Rocks and Akuma No Uta (a reference to the boss demon in CapCom’s Street-Fighter game). Akuma doesn’t sing, but the devil of beatdown lives in the hammer blows of Atsuo’s drums and sin in the exquisite cymbals.
Evil in intent but as artistic as a H.R. Giger illustration, Dear is Sunn0))), Sleep and Sigh in slogging dream states. It is difficult to imagine that two chords in nine minutes can destroy the soul and enlighten the mind, but Boris have never been less than imaginative.
As the smog and doom-haze parts, a masterpiece epoch of heavenly transformation, “Memento Mori,” arises from the ocean like a metal Magog. Beautiful as a multi-hued bruise, “Memento Mori” is drug-sick junkie dreaming of opioid treasure in its stealthy tug of desire embedded in the beauty of vice. By far Dream’s finest hour crunched into its economic 4:40 span, it is a lesson taught by senseis of how far magic can expand music.
(released July 14, 2017 on Sargent House Records)
