Boris, ''Ibitsu''

As you might've gathered from my A-list blurb for their show at the Triple Rock tonight, Boris are a pretty multifaceted and unpredictable band -- not to mention a loud one. Loud, loud, loud. Of course, they perpetrate different varieties of loud: there's the hellacious squalls of feedback, the deep, subwoofer-destroying doom rumble of super-slow-motion sludge-metal, and in some cases, the kind of loud that would be quiet in any other context aside from their forays into ultra-minimalist ambient experimentation. And if that's all a bit much for you, there's always their straightforward rock jams, the ones that run off the theory that Motörhead was a good start.
It's taken me a while -- slowly, but surely -- to get into the denser, more intimidating avant-doom explosion-at-the-molasses-factory stuff, but they've concocted a hell of a gateway drug with their shorter, punchier, thrashier stuff -- like the songs on 2003's Akuma No Uta, an album which hilariously messes with all expectations by hiding inside a sleeve that parodies Nick Drake's cover for Bryter Later. "Ibitsu" does not, in fact, sound like Nick Drake. It sounds like Kill 'Em All outfitted with turbochargers, and its video -- set to CGI footage of transforming robot war machines shooting missiles all over the place before blowing apart into a million pieces and reconverging as a gigantic cybernetic megalopolis -- is a better depiction of this sound than anything anyone anywhere could ever think up.
 
Download Akuma No Uta on Amazon.com