Boris

At the center of Boris’s live set-up is a gong. On both sides of it you will see very large amplifiers manufactured by Sunn, by Orange, by Marshall—things you’d probably see other rock bands play, though perhaps not in the same quantities. But the gong is different. It sits at the center of Atsuo’s drum kit, and, at least in the case of this performance, only really saw use to mark the beginning and the end of the set (alongside Atsuo throwing metal horns before sitting down at his drums and again after finishing their last song, standing atop his kit and commanding them from a devoted audience as if he were conducting an orchestra that played metal horns more or less whenever the hell it felt like it). Even when it goes unused, however, it makes their live show that much more special, a less-than-subtle reminder of just how committed they are to being one of the heaviest bands touring.

As always, it was pretty much impossible to tell what to expect from their set. I last saw Boris in 2007, tearing through most of Pink (2005) with the energy and dexterity necessary to carry that music in a live setting seemingly effortlessly, producing squalls of noise, drones, and feedback with melodies that felt stronger, more efficient the more I heard them. Somewhere along the way, however, I got frustrated by the band’s psychotic release schedule—many EPs, singles, live albums, and other material released in different formats, different mixes, and in scarce quantities all over the world—and tuned out after Smile (2008), which was sequenced and mixed completely differently for its Japanese and American releases. But this proves largely not to be an issue in a live setting, where the band does whatever the hell they want and loudness is virtually the only guarantee.

A slow-burning version of Pink’s “Farewell” opened the show following Atsuo’s gong hits, but anything resembling the set of theirs I caught three years ago was instantly diverted as the next song, and a fair amount of the band’s set, consisted of slow-burning, smoky psych-rock sung by guitarist and occasional vocalist Wata, which was unexpected. As they have been since 2008, the band was augmented by third guitarist Michio Kurihara, who used these songs as opportunities to play lengthy, intense solos. Yet the band’s heavier, more droning side didn’t come through as it has in the past; they stuck pretty strictly to the rock and metal-leaning side of their catalog, with drones serving more as interludes than anything else. Later moments practically evoked nineties alt-rock, as part of the late 2006 album (and first collaboration with Kurihara) Rainbow did.

Yet the set ended by bringing things full-circle; following about an hour of this stuff, the band launched into Pink’s title track, then proceeded to tear through all of the album’s heaviest moments at near-apocalyptic volumes and speed to the kind of applause that I admit to almost never seeing at metal shows, and certainly didn’t see happen during openers Helms Alee’s metal and Red Sparowes’ take on post-rock. By the end of the night, Atsuo had stood atop his kit, triumphant above a final ten minute wall of 110+ decibel feedback, smoke, and flashing lights, the kind of theatrics that qualify this band to obliterate arenas as thoroughly as they did a sub-1000 capacity venue in Seattle. In short, even as someone who hadn’t cared about this band in years, I was stunned.