Amplifier Worship

With their second full-length album, Boris takes their sludgy, Melvins-influenced doom rock style and gives it a heavy psychedelic slant. The album is divided into five tracks, but like their other albums, Absolutego and Flood, it plays out like one extended piece and is meant to be listened to straight through in one sitting. It starts out with a slow, ugly doom riff that repeats for several minutes before heading into a stretched-out, psychedelic jam section on the lengthy second track, "Ganbou-Ki." After another succession of heavy riffing, psych-rock jamming, and a little bit of up-tempo punk action (the first part of "Kuruimizu," which still retains a Melvins-like feel), they move into several minutes of spacey, surprisingly pretty guitar/bass picking, similar to much of what's on Flood. Finally, they settle into a dense guitar/bass feedback drone à la Earth for the lengthy final track, "Vomitself." The album as a whole feels like a sort of journey in terms of how it opens in one vein, moves through various other sections, and then closes in yet another style, but it also maintains a consistent mood (and they don't use the word "doom" to refer to this type of music for nothing). In any case, Amplifier Worship proves Boris to be on the more innovative (not to mention heavy) end of the sludge/doom metal spectrum and is recommended to open-eared fans of the style; casual listeners, on the other hand, will probably have trouble getting into the album, since it does require some patience. ~ William York|