BORIS: DRONEVIL (2005)
1) Giddiness Throne; 2)
Interference Demon; 3) Evil Wave Form; 4) The Evil One Which Sobs.
Okay, so apparently this is one of those fairly
rare Zaireeka-type albums where you
are supposed to plop in two CDs at a time and listen to them interfere. Sounds logical,
since the first one is all «drone» and the second one is all «evil», er, «sludge»,
really. ʽGiddiness Throneʼ constructs a background that sounds like twenty
minutes of deep cavernous echo; ʽInterference Demonʼ gives you twenty minutes
of what sounds like an annoying siren hacked at mid-point and stuck in a
single, barely changing tone; ʽEvil Wave Formʼ offers some dynamics in totally
familiar shape, with Wata's usual monster guitar tones interrupted for a few
minutes with calm, echoey ambience; and ʽThe Evil One Which Sobsʼ is sixteen
more minutes of the same.
I have to confess that I have not tried
juxtaposing the two, and am therefore not qualified to make opinions about the
resulting sound. I freely admit that it would not have been difficult, even on
a computer — just stash two media players on top of each other — but something
inside me just told me no. In the
back of my mind, I can see where the combination of the deep rumble of ʽGiddiness
Throneʼ and the gigantic metal waves of ʽEvil Wave Formʼ would certainly make
far more sense than listening to them separately, but I have no desire to waste
my time on that.
Allegedly, as claimed by some adepts of this
album, quite a bit of work did go into the synchronizing of the tracks, so
that the «lows» and the «highs» of individual tracks correlate with each other,
but you will just have to check it for yourself — a lot of one's opinions on
Boris actually depends on one's preconceptions of Boris. I am afraid, though,
that since ʽEvil Wave Formʼ does nothing for me on its own, it will probably
not do much more when nutritioned further by the «deep», but simplistic texture
of the «drone-ambient» track. It's all just a lot of boring sludgy bullshit,
and clearly, the «success» of Dronevil
depends on nothing but the gimmick. Give it a chance if you want, spare me the
trouble — if I am really in the mood for modern day doom metal (which is rare),
I'll go get me some Agalloch instead.
Of course one simply can go to Youtube to check the result.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kp63Aba-fiQ
I listened to a couple of minutes. Nice muzak, far less irritating than elevator music. But I think Agalloch boring as well.
When will bands learn that gimmicks aren't an adequate replacement for good songwriting? "Zaireeka", however one feels about it, can be forgiven because Wayne Coyne proved he was a smart, skillful songwriter all through the last decade. Plus, if you only played the main disc you at least got some decent tunes, while the others had some cool if unnecessary sound effects. I've never sat through this album, or any great amount of Boris material, so I can't really make a definitive judgment -- but these guys sound like uber-pretentious dicks.
ReplyDelete"Pretentious" my ass. All ambient music is "pretentious" too I take it?
DeleteBoris aren't trying to write yer average 4-minute rock song. God I am sick and tired of people dismissing all music that doesn't focus on melodic hookwriting as "pretentious" - it's been itself a pretentious criticism since the 70s.
That's not my belief whatsoever -- I'm a big fan of Brian Eno. Eno didn't make his ambient stuff "hooky", per se, but he was a master of atmosphere -- Boris, from what I've heard of them, and from George's reviews, are not, except for maybe "Flood". There's good and bad ambient music, just like there are good and bad 4-minute rock songs. Like I said, my comment was not a definitive assessment -- but peddling yet another hour of monotonous sludge w/ this added gimmick doesn't leave a good taste in my mouth. "Zaireeka"'s approach is kinda pretentious too, but at least the album is listenable and interesting in stripped-down form. I find people who call Electric Wizard's "Dopethrone" one of the greatest metal albums because it's SOOO "heavy" and "sludgy" pretentious, because (to my plebeian ears) it's boring as sh!t.
DeleteGeorgie boy, if you want some great 'modern' Doom Metal, check out the now sadly defunct Reverend Bizarre.
ReplyDeleteI'll admit I tried it ...once. I then gave the 2 discs away. My recommendation for current "doom" would have to be the Wounded Kings.
ReplyDeleteSmoke Weed Everyday!
ReplyDelete