by Devon Chodzin (@bigugly)
When it comes to heavy music, there are few bands as devoted to the limitless playground of the extreme as Japan’s Boris. Over thirty years and even more releases, Boris is not content with playing in the same sandbox record after record, instead staking claims across dream pop, post-rock, ambient, and more with the weighty extremity they have mastered. For W, the companion piece to 2020’s obstreperous NO, the rowdiness is dialed back towards an icy, dreamy landscape with movements that make the listener feel so weightless that one has to wonder if the record has medicinal properties. W is still just as intense as its predecessors, but the intensity manifests - and thus affects - in a subtle, transfixing way.
W’s metallic tracks represent some of Boris’s most hypnotic works to date. The record’s opener, “I Want to Go to the Side Where You Can Touch…” resembles icy sludge, ensconcing the record within a drone metal tradition where Boris has historically shined. The kick drum haunts like a tell-tale heart. Instrumental metal tracks like “The Fallen” wash over the listener like sleet, presenting some of the few aggressive riffs that can be found on this record. “Old Projector” begins with droning post-rock that mutates into a doom finale designed to induce collapse.
In a rare move, Wata takes the lead vocally throughout the record, offering ethereality and mystique on some of the band’s quietest works. “Icelina” emerges after the opening track suddenly evaporates, with percussive ticking as Wata introduces the listener to a gentle, humming character. The instrumental volume and percussion escalate on “Drowning by Numbers” while Wata and Atsuo deliver ASMR-like vocals that repeat with a precision which juxtaposes well with the controlled chaos of droning shoegaze. It’s hard not to be spellbound.
“Beyond Good and Evil” sticks out as a devastating exercise in quietude interrupted. The track proves personal for Wata, whose hometown Hiroshima is still reckoning with the unfathomable devastation of the United States’ atomic bombing. Dynamic and stylistic shifts resemble the intrusion of the bomb and the chronology of its detonation, all the while Wata remains breathy, ethereal, and pensive. The track is shaking, crushing, and scintillating, endemic to the challenging but rewarding healing exercise that Boris sought to achieve with W. There is little doubt that W is a record marked by a strange beauty as a result of albums prior, but W is special, constructed with care and charm that is both timeless and contemporaneous, yet another achievement for the storied band.