SilentScream213 Boris, the beloved Drone Metallers from Japan. Or rather, by now they are more of a chameleon act, but it all started here.

Personally, I’ve got a bit of a beef with Boris. Not the band itself, obviously, but the concept. You see, I love Japanese Metal. It’s an indescribable scene with some of the most unique acts in the world, ranging through every genre under the sun. They tend to have a penchant for stick-in-your-head melodies as well as boundless experimentation. Unfortunately, many of these bands never get any recognition outside their home country. Even X Japan, revered as the country’s version of The Beatles in their home, is unknown outside of metal/music nerd circles. For some reason, getting notoriety for a Japanese (Metal) band seems much more difficult than for bands in the West.

And what band struck gold? What band tops charts across websites and is beloved by the music world? Boris. The band who makes a song by playing the same four notes dragged out over 9 minutes. Or not even playing notes at all, and letting the feedback speak for itself.

Don’t get me wrong, Boris are experimental, and unique. They experiment with how boring they can possibly make a song and still get it labeled a masterpiece anyway. They’re also very unique in that they’ll put a directionless Drone Metal song on the same record as a repetitive Stoner Metal song and a *checking RYM genre voting page* Post-Rock song? In all of which almost nothing happens and they are considered loveable quirky hipsters.

If you can’t tell, this review really isn’t about Boris. It’s about my frustration with feeling out of touch. Nothing against the band… but they represent all I do not understand about the music fandom.

SilentScream213 Boris is actually one of the most notable Metal bands to come out of Japan, and one of the biggest names in Drone Metal overall. Their debut is, maybe unsurprisingly for a still rather new and unexplored genre, underwhelming. The single hour-long track is just guitar fuzz and feedback for the majority of it. Nothing resembling riffs or even rhythms – really, it’s just feedback noise (in my opinion, this doesn’t qualify as Metal, but, that’s neither here nor there). There is a midsection where drumming and vocals come in, and that’s really the only Metal part of it, hell it’s the only part that resembles music at all, but it still ain’t good. And it’s over soon enough, back to just noise.

Drone Metal – at least THIS type of Drone Metal, with no mood or rhythm or anything resembling a melody – is like a niche fetish. One that disgusts me, that I cannot and will not ever be into. But for anyone who enjoys it – I’m happy for you, get your rocks off to some wack fuzz.

Warthur Boris tend to vary a bit in releases between more purist drone and drone metal - the distinction being in how much in the way they lean on their post-rock and ambient influences and how many meaty Black Sabbath-on-valium riffs they work into their music. To my ears, the balance on Amplifier Worship is very much towards drone metal; take, for instance, album closer vomitself, which begins in slow doom metal territory and then somehow degrades into a grumbling earth tremor of a track. Goodness knows what the frog on the cover is supposed to represent, but ultimately what metalhead could go far wrong with an album called Amplifier Worship?

siLLy puPPy True that Earth was first in creating the whole drone metal thing and others like Melvins and Naked City immediately followed in the wake but it was the Japanese noise worshippers BORIS who really created something special in the doom and gloom department with an amplifier feed back so fat it needs lyposuction and bass sound so deep it disturbs slimy earth worms. ABSOLUTEGO is the then quartet’s debut album which originally came out on the Fangs Anal Satan label but has since been picked up by Southern Lord where it features a bonus track.

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.

Warthur Taking in the gathering of stormclouds, the unleashing of the storm, the eruption of the floodwaters, and the calm in the wake of the disaster, Flood is a four-part mostly-instrumental drone exploration with occasional sludge metal flavour. Between them, Wata, Atsuo and Takeshi show an adept mastery of mood and atmosphere, showing a tempestuous ability to shift gear abruptly to perfectly reflect the ebb and flow of the natural disaster of drone the album offers. Wata, in particular, by switching between the guitar and the e-bow makes a particularly nuanced contribution to the album. A genuine drone classic by any measure.