Throwback Thursday: Boris - Pink

It's Boris week! Since I'm going to see Boris this weekend, I thought it would be fitting to talk about one of their absolute best works for this week's Throwback Thursday. "Pink" came out in 2005, and is highly regarded as a seminal sludge and doom metal album by critics and fans all over the world. Boris has a lot of other albums; a lot of more unique albums, even. But I don't think anything has come close to having the impact that "Pink" has had, and as such it was the best option for the article. If there was another album you hoped for, let us know! Maybe it will pop up in a future TBT article?

"Pink" opens with this MASSIVE, sprawling landscape of feedback-ridden drone doom known as "Farewell". It's a gorgeous soundscape at the best of times, which the band built upon for their recent Merzbow collaboration "Gensho". This is probably the closest Boris ever came to true shoegaze, though the squealing feedback later in the song owes more to No New York than to the Scene That Celebrates Itself. Either way, this song is beautiful, powerful, an unstoppable force of pure bliss.

The next song demolishes all of that. The title track, "Pink", lashes out at the beauty of the previous song with reckless abandon. Wild and chaotic, this song is the definition of heavy metal. As one of Boris' best-known and most well-loved songs, "Pink" has gone down in history as some of the best metal ever recorded. This song bleeds right into the pummeling "Woman on the Screen". This is another one of my favorite Boris tracks. The energy on this one is so intense, it's right on the edge of hardcore punk. I can only imagine how the sharp feedback near the end must have sounded live. Unfortunately, Boris doesn't play this song live very often. They don't play MOST of this album, in fact.

"Nothing Special" is distorted and sludgy, with desperately screamed vocals breaking through the thick cloud of sludge. Over before you know it, this one leaves you in a stupor. Which good because a stupor is exactly what the next song sounds like. "Blackout" is doom metal as all hell, impossibly thick and rife with feedback. The mostly-instrumental beast leads into the shortest track on here, "Electric". "Electric" shares a lot of similarities with "Woman on the Screen" musically, but is actually instrumental. It's like a short break, if wildly chaotic guitars and drums are your idea of a break.

"Pink" performed live on MTV Iggy

"Pseudo-Bread" is another destructive romp through heavy metal territory, but then things start to change. "Afterburner" sounds almost improvised, twisting and turning all around in a totally unstructured way. "Six, Three Times" (get it? 666? because metal is satanic, you know) is a pretty monotonously droning piece of hardcore punk, with those soaring vocals we've become accustomed to over the course of the album. "My Machine" is a downtempo ambient piece which sounds like it's just some leftover resonance from the chaos that came before. It almost sounds like it intends to close the album. But no, that's next. The final song, something really over-the-top. "Just Abandoned Myself".

"Just Abandoned Myself" closes the album in the most Boris way imaginable; this is a MONSTROUS 18-minute song, which pounds and pummels you into submission from the very first notes. After about 5 and a half minutes of purely soaring heavy metal, the song takes a turn into a new territory altogether. It builds and builds into this insane wall of power, Boris becoming an unstoppable chaotic force. The tempo starts to slow down while the backing vocals start to wane, and we're starting to fall back into drone doom. The crunching feedback is overtaking everything in its way, even as the thin,

wailing lead guitar struggles to break free. There's still some small hint of vocals 9 minutes in, but they're losing strength. All this fades slowly into a drone. A pure and simple wall of noise. This is what My Bloody Valentine fans refer to as the "holocaust" during that band's live sets, but for Boris it's just... Boris. The purest form of noise, seeming almost endless. Earplugs were invented for this, for those who value their hearing. It's not until almost 12 minutes in that we start to hear some very thin lead guitar struggling to crawl free. Improvised little strums here and there, fighting past the harsh wall of horror in their path. You keep rooting for those little notes, you keep hoping they'll succeed, but they never do. The crunch becomes a buzz, then a whirr, a whistle, and the noise subsides. The album is over.

"Pink" is one of the most intense metal listening experiences I've ever had. The title track, "Woman on the Screen"... Songs like that are incredible bouts of fury from a band who might have discovered the formula for perfection. "Farewell" is such a beautiful piece, and "Just Abandoned Myself"... I've never listened to that song all the way through until it was time to write this review. Sure I've HEARD it, and sure I've skipped around to pick up bits and pieces, but I've never experienced the full extend of power Boris expressed in that 18-minute time frame. A lot of musicians try to do what Boris did there, they think a 20-minute feedback drone is just high volume and monotonous noise. Boris shows that it's an emotional journey, they're almost telling a story just through their feedback and distortion. Boris might have inspired hundreds if not thousands, of noise musicians across the world, but nobody does it better than them. "Pink" is one of my favorite albums of all time, and I hope it can be yours as well. And hey, if you're not into the noise? There's still a whole album of awesome and pummeling heavy metal to get you sorted out.

-Justin

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Boris will be playing the Glass House Concert Hall in Pomona, California, on Saturday May 7th. TICKETS CAN BE PURCHASED HERE

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Pink

1. Farewell
   
2. Pink
   
3. Woman on the Screen
   
4. Nothing Special
   
5. Blackout
   
6. Electric
   
7. Pseudo-Bread
   
8. Afterburner
   
9. Six, Three Times
   
10. My Machine
    
11. Just Abandoned Myself
    

Boris is:

• Atsuo Mizuno (Drums, Backing Vocals)
• Wata (Guitar, Lead Vocals)
• Takeshi Ohtani (Guitar, Bass, Lead Vocals)

• OFFICIAL WEBSITE
  
• FACEBOOK
  
• TWITTER

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