Boris have never been one for hedged bets or bridled ambitions. In the past 15 years, the Japanese trio has released more than 20 albums of heavy eclecticism-- stoner bludgeons and thrash blasts, dense drones and noise screes. They're the band with Atsuo-- the screaming, gong-banging drummer with one of those arena-rock, hands-off microphones-- and Takeshi, a multi-instrumentalist who plays a double-necked guitar so often and well that it doesn't seem like an affectation. Michio Kurihara, one of the world's best psychedelic guitarists, works as Boris' touring sideman. From former labelmates Sunn O))) to fellow Japanese sonic explorers Merzbow and Keiji Haino, they've also collaborated with a long list of experimental luminaries. All of this seems to be part and parcel to Boris' methodical quest to build a legacy of expansive, new heavy music, where no form is too sacred to break, no idea too mainstream to incorporate. If that's their plan, it's largely worked.
Accordingly, there are few release-day gestures more rock star than issuing two albums at the same time, as Boris will do with the slight electropop-and-shoegaze departure Attention Please and the requisite metal grab bag Heavy Rocks. What's more, this is the second Boris LP to sport the title Heavy Rocks; the first was released in 2002, and nearly a decade later, it still stands as one of Boris' best efforts, a landmark distillation of stoner metal and noise rock built with enviable precision and aggression. This moment, then, is not only Boris' look-how-popular-we-are exclamation but also their look-how-much-we've-grown assertion; essentially, Attention Please and Heavy (Heavier?) Rocks are logical next steps for the Boris legacy. But riddled as this pair of albums is with confounding musical indecision and listless stylistic repetition, they mostly serve as reminders of how remarkable and inventive Boris have been and often threaten to be. Heavy Rocks was sturdier back in 2002, while the appropriately titled Attention Please-- even if the more interesting of these two discs-- is a flimsy showcase for Boris guitarist Wata as a would-be college-rock frontwoman.
Heavy Rocks does the things you expect a Boris album to do: It explodes open with "Riot Sugar", a brutal blues-metal march with a rote, ragged riff and background grunts from the Cult's Ian Astbury. "Missing Pieces" alternates between spare guitar drift, gnarls of noise, and an epically forlorn crescendo, while the other 12-minute-plus tune, "Aileron", growls and swells before drifting off into a piano-and-distortion haze. For fans of Boris, the material is a double-edged sword: It's the sort of motley metal that brought you to the fold one way or another, but that means you've already heard it-- all of it, from the massive soundscapes on Pink to the dynamic sizzle in Amplifier Worship-- several times before. Here, it's all offered like a mixtape, with no narrative arch or musical momentum.
Attention Please at least offers something fresh for Boris. For the first time in the band's long run, Wata takes lead vocal. Her consistent presence offers an atmosphere of patience, plus a cohesiveness that Boris have long since foregone. Sure, she leads the band through several different looks, from the tense, pretty opening title track to the dance-metal anthem "Party Boy". During "See You Next Week", she drifts like a ghost between a world of broken drum machines and guitars meant more for texture than melody. There's a ruminative instrumental for acoustic guitar, and "Spoon", a blustery tumble that-- Wata's willowy vocals aside-- favorably suggests the sound of 1990s American modern rock radio. What's best, the trio doesn't give up on its heavy metal experience; though this album suggests a stylistic mix of new wave and Mazzy Star, Boris play with the rumble and roar of a loud rock band. The bass line during the chiming "Tokyo Wonder Land" is a menacing throb, the guitar solo an acid-damaged roar. "Les Paul Custom '86" emerges as a dance number through sheets of noise, anchored by a riff that would have fit Earth in 1993. Those tell-all touches and Wata's command suggest that this is the better, if unforeseen, avenue for Boris' future. Though not fully developed, this is a space where they might actually explore without the constraints of reputation and expectation.
The heavy metal landscape of 2011 is tailor-made for (and, sort of, by) Boris. Sure, the black metal kids are busy retrenching against boundary breakers like Liturgy and Altar of Plagues, and a whole lot of older burly bros will tell you that stoner, thrash, and melodramatic metal were done better the first time. They're not necessarily wrong, but those sorts of attitudes provide a welcome contrast for the tone of inclusion and acceptance for ideas that permeates not only some of the moment's most exciting metal but also music at large. Whether it's the elegiac folk singer heading for stacks of finely orchestrated keyboards or the black metal band backing its melee with a pure and purposed disco-punk throb, a whole crop of young acts now seem open to the possibilities within their forms. Their audiences largely seem interested in tagging along, too. After all, we obtain and hear music in radically different ways and contexts now than in 1996, when Boris were making their recorded debut as a noisy sludge-metal band from Tokyo. Boris' post-modern eclecticism is, in theory, perfect for this moment. But pastiches and piss-takes-- by and large, the sort of material that's scattered between Attention Please and the second Heavy Rocks-- can only satisfy so much. Boris seem to be racing to stay current, to show that they can change as rapidly as these hyper-wired times. With each new addition to a catalog that's becoming more adulterated each year, we're learning that maybe they can't.
