BORIS Mania

I think everything that needs to be said about this band has already been said a million times, so i won't get into how awesome I think this band is. I mean, it doesn't get any better than a fucking noise/stoner/sludge band that also happens to have a amazingly gorgeous big-breasted guitar player (Wata) who looks so beautiful, but shreds so evil. Check out the album cover for "Feedbacker", it's truly woody-inducing. Maybe we'll be lucky and get a nude photobook of her included with the next CD.

Anyway, enough about my sick fantasies of mounting Wata. Let's get to the music. First of all, there's a shitload of releases. I mean a shitload. And there's like 30 versions of the same album, which make them a very collectable band. So you can easily go broke just collecting Boris CD's and LP's. Or you can just download their entire discography from a torrent file, which is pretty easy to find actually.

The first Boris CD I ever bought was Feedbacker, and i think that one's still one of my favorites. But I'd have to say my personal favorite so far is DRONEVIL, it's a 2-CD set, but you're supposed to play the 2 CD's on 2 different stereos simultaneously. Well, I don't have two damn stereos and neither do most people, so I just mixed the two discs in ProTools and burned everything onto 1 track. Aaahhhhhhh, DRONEVIL, it IS the shit. I get a metal boner listening this, it's the epitamy of doom.

My other personal favorites are FLOOD, ABSOLUTEGO, and AMPLIFIER WORSHIP. The aforementioned albums are all long drone concept albums clocking in at over an hour, and that's the BORIS I prefer at this point. I have 7 or 8 Boris CD's which is nothing, considering that many of their fanbase collect EVERY version of every LP and CD. I like too many other bands to be just a collector of BORIS. I've heard most of the other limited LP's and some of them are not necessary anyway. I downloaded mp3's of most of those and made handmade CD versions. For example, there are 3 volumes of "The Thing Which Solomon Overlooked" which are good, but not absolutely necessary. Also, there are 2 completely different versions of VEIN, a hardcore version and a drone version. They're good too, but not essential.

There's also an soundtrack CD to an imaginary film called "Mabuta No Uta", which is really nice. There's 3 or 4 versions of that i think, and to make things even more frustrating, each version has different packaging and tracks that can't be found on the other version(s).

If you don't like the long drone/sludge so much and just wanna hear some great Sabbath-like balls to the wall ROCK, pick up PINK, HEAVY ROCKS or AKUMA NO UTA (which is actually a good sampling of all their flavors, so a good place to dive in head first). Boris has a little something for everyone I think, and that's part of what makes them so unique. They're not afraid to limit themselves and each subsequent release shows them growing.

A few of my other current favorites is the Sunn O))) Boris collaboration "ALTAR" and the MERZBOW / BORIS collaboration aptly titled "Sun Baked Snow Cave".

Like I said before, you don't need to buy everything they've ever put out, but just about everything I've heard so far is good in some way or another. I'm really looking forward to hearing their new CD with Ghost guitarist, Michio Kurihara, I heard nothing but good things about it.

There's tons of information and resources on Boris, and just about everyone and his dog has blogged about them in some way, so that's why I'm gonna keep this post relatively short. You can start by checking out their website at http://homepage1.nifty.com/boris/