No

Boris No is at once an anomaly in their vast catalog and arguably one of their most familiar. When the band released Love & Evol in 2019, its schizophrenic character seemed more a summation of various phases in their career than an exploration of their possible future. By contrast, No is a raging, claustrophobic, ear-bleeding reflection of the past as it informs the present. It screams with primal ferocity while questioning whether the future is even possible. How else to explain the bands statement: We have put all of our influences and connections into this album so that they may be passed on and circulated. at over 11 songs and 35 minutes recorded during -- and in response to -- the Covid pandemic, Boris aggressively engage sludge metal, hardcore punk, guttersnipe thrash metal, D-beat, and more, and coat all of it with thick squalling noise. The appropriately titled opener, Genesis, is a slowly evolving but taut exercise in swirling noise and sludge metal. Centering on a single syncopated guitar and bass riff, layers of distortion and feedback push back at doomy tom-toms and kick drums. While the riff unspools gradually and picks up the tempo later on, its punishing force is framed in multivalently layered feedback and noise. After opening Anti-Gone with a seeming stadium rock crescendo, Boris puts the pedal to the metal and goes off. Sounding like vintage Discharge, the tune jumps the rails amid roared and chanted group choruses, pummeling double-kick drums and careening, overdriven guitars. Non-Blood Lore follows suit, coming right up from the D-beat sewer with a twist: Theres a Voivod-esque feint in the bridge, a melodic group chorus, and psych guitar break that, when combined, make for a glorious mess. They follow with Theatre of Hatred, a crushing two-minute hardcore sprint that moves so far into the sludge-noise red zone it becomes genreless. HxCxHxC - Perforation Line - has the notable distinction of fusing ragged, edgy, shoegaze and splintering hardcore. While Zerkalo is a screaming, doom-laden sludge jam shoehorned into a mountain of Black Sabbath worship, Kikinoue weds doom and hardcore to unhinged defiance. The lone cover is a spiky read of Japanese punk pioneers Gudons Fundamental Error, with guitar-hero guest Katsumi Sugahara shredding all over it, adding to its orgiastic cacophony. Single Loveless opens with a Sonic Youth-esque dual octave hook that dissolves into screaming call-and-response hardcore, then oceanic thrash metal with hellish guitar solos, and ultimately, doomy, noisy, Melvins-esque sludge and roll. Ironically, No ends with the gentle, pillowy shoegaze of Interlude with whispered vocals from Wata. While hardly a political album, No reflects the frustration, anger, fear, and helplessness of the 2020 pandemic in a global zeitgeist. While its stylistic hallmarks are undeniably part of the bands musical signature, here they pay homage to the past while simultaneously reflecting the tense uncertainty of the present and future, directly and consistently, making No the bands strongest, most visionary outing since Pink. ~ Thom Jurek