Boris – Dear

‘We don’t feel comfortable calling Dear a return to our slow and heavy style,’ says Tokyo’s amplifier worshipping experimental metal institution Boris. ‘We’ve been heavy since day one.’ And it’s true. From the droning thunder of their Absolutego debut and through the cinematic crescendo of albums like Flood, the bombastic licks of the Heavy Rocks records, the punk rage of Vein, the bottom-dwelling psychedelia of Akuma no Uta and Pink, and the grimy thump of Attention Please and New Album, Boris has always attempted to search out new ways to level listeners with their sound. On the 25th year of their existence, the trio delivers Dear, an album they describe as ‘heavenly far beyond heavy.’ Though Boris has traversed a broad swath of sonic territories, they have always been consistent in their embracing of excess, pushing their myriad of approaches and stylistic forays to points of intoxicating absurdity.

Claudio Abbado uses Mussorgsky's text in a condition almost as complete as Mstislav Rostropovich's but avoiding some overlap from variant readings. He brings to his conducting the same vitality and scrupulous attention to small details that are familiar from his work in Italian opera. His cast is good throughout and particularly strong in the leading roles. This is a Boris to live with, one that gets better with repeated hearings.

Love & Evol (stylized as LφVE & EVφL) is the twenty-fifth studio album by Japanese experimental band Boris, released 4 October 2019 on Third Man Records. The band describes the release as two distinct but interconnected works, bearing the titles LφVE and EVφL respectively, "encapsulating conflicting connotations that interweave and become intricately entangled with one another, gradually eroding before becoming utterly singular." The release was intended to illustrate the different extremes of the sounds Boris has explored previously in their discography, and as a counterpoint to their darker and more aggressive previous album Dear.