Boris played Brighton Music Hall – 5/5
Japan’s most versatile drone/doom/experimental metal band spent two nights in Boston last weekend as a part of their From the Past, the Present and Through to the Future tour. I was distracted by a former Smith during Saturday’s “greatest hits” set, but I made it to Brighton for the full album performance of Flood the next night. The Converge-affiliated Doomriders opened.
Playing an album in full on tour is hardly a new trend nowadays, but I’d wager that not many bands do it quite like Boris. Bands like Sonic Youth, Slint and (currently) The Breeders have taken their classic albums on the road, but where Daydream Nation, Spiderland and Last Splash offer the ebb and flow of rock records, Flood presents a monolithic slab of hypnotic drone and crushing doom. Flood unfolds in four movements over the course of 70 minutes, building from looped guitars to a subdued “Maggot Brain”-esque passage and then a massive, unfathomably heavy climax before fading back into the echoes and the mist. It’s a challenge for sure, and the band took some liberties to craft an effective live performance out of it. The looped opening and largely ambient closing passages were clipped back, focusing the audience’s attention on the contemplative Part Two and the explosive Part Three. The result was a satisfying dose of two of Boris’ many strengths as a band: slow-burn instrumentals and towering doom metal assaults.
The band warmed up with a few experimentally-minded cuts, having rocked out with their more punk and noise-rock oriented material the night before. A fierce set of sludgy hardcore from Doomriders had already met this night’s punk quota by that point, anyway. Boris opened with a reworked “Huge” from 2001’s Amplifier Worship, and even dropped a warped, slow-motion take on the My Bloody Valentine classic “Sometimes.” Night two of this residency surely showcased a more low-key Boris than I was used to, having seen them play an exuberantly face-melting set at the Royale in 2011. The usually gleeful Atsuo sat behind his drum kit shrouded in darkness for most of the set (though he did stand and raise his drumsticks to the sky more than once, and joined the crowd in a sign of the horns salute at the close of the show). Guitarists/vocalists Wata and Takeshi also appeared rather distant, allowing their towering stacks of amplifiers to speak for themselves. Seeing the band’s more upbeat side on Saturday would have brought the experience full-circle, but Flood night at Brighton was still a mind-bending experience on its own.
Full photo gallery here.