If Boris still seem to be grinding away in the same nether regions of minimal riffage and maximum volume, moving at a glacial pace as they enter their 25th year, this should be viewed as a major positive. Only through such single-minded aural destruction and focus on the silences between the terrifying detonations of sound can this Tokyo trio release such painfully crafted and micro-nuanced tracks of such heaviosity and volume and unscaled beauty as D.O.W.N. – Domination Of Waking and Absolutego (the latter sounding like it was lifted straight from a wrongly forgotten Soundgarden Superunknown session).
This music is not for the easily perturbed. One mighty, chundering riff follows another, and another. And another. Until silence takes over and sounds more threatening than hope. On Beyond, time itself slows down, stops, turns backwards and restarts – something akin to a cataclysmic retelling of Ted Hughes’s poem The Iron Man, but with the considerable added bonus of the sound of blood drip-drip-dripping from your perforated eardrums.
Plenty of pallid indie math-rock imitators – from Godspeed! downwards – have attempted to do what Boris do here, and all have failed. Boris abide.
