"Reccomended to fans of Cro-Mags and Gudon"?

"Beefy Speedfreak Hardcore"?

Not what you might expect from a new Boris album, based on those label quotes. This here is the North American LP release of this Boris oddity from 2020, written and recorded during the height of the Covid pandemic, the band soaring beyond the edges of their familiar ultra crush metallic psych-pop and various permutations to the land of sharpened bones and blood-encrusted rocks, the realm of older 1980s-era hardcore punk and crossover thrash. Of course, when this album was first announced and described to the fans, there was all kinds of consternation going on, but No really doesn't sound all that removed from the rest of the Boris catalog the more I listen to this beast. It does tap into levels of aggression and extreme speed that are rare for the group, but there's still something about this band that makes 'em almost instantly recognizable even when they are bustin' out some vicious anti-authoritarian weed-seeped assault that sounds like it got shaken loose from the Combat Records slush pile circa 1989. If that sounds like a liability, it's not, at least not to my brain-damaged POV.

For one thing, the Melvins worship is still smeared deep into the fabric of No's blast. You can't miss it, really. This is not the "Boris HardCore Punk Album" that some have made it out to be, these eleven songs span a much wider range than that. But these guys do crank up the tempos and aggro. The dark majesty of opener “Genesis" hints at gravitational doom that's prepped to bulldoze your shit all over the joint, even with those harmonized guitar licks early on; the Neanderthal chug that this tune slips into is a real backbreaker. This song is just straight up titanic sludge metal that recalls earlier Southern Lord-era Boris in spades, a murderous three-chord chug-a-thon that morphs into one of the sickest riffs of the week. Goddamn killer.

The the hardcore worship kicks in with "Anti-Gone", open with one of those gigantic raveups before launching into some primo old-school hardcore punk but with that signature berserker guitar soloing and teamed vocals that just blow your hair off your dome, and with an in-the-red blown-out coda that's pure Boris. That hardcore element likewise erupts in short clusters on No: the screaming circle-pit bliss of "Non Blood Lore", "Temple Of Hatred", "Lust" all deliver an insurgent kind of melodic hardcore speed attack with almost "poppy" gang-vocals that's feels very distinctly informed by that cult Japanese "Burning Spirit" hardcore scene from the 1990s. Ferocious and triumphant, melodically complex but exploding with speed and violent energy, evoking the D-beat charged anthems of bands like Judgement, the offbeat and eclecticism of Paintbox's stuff, Bet On the Possibility-era Death Side. This is really as catchy as anything you'd expect to hear from Boris, as well as being as amp-blowing distorted; thrash bursts are limned in vocal harmonies, songs deconstruct themselves in front of your eyes and abruptly change into minimalist ambient drift, fucked-up electronic glichery and moments of unexpectedly Voivodian thrash laced with scouring noise, sudden lane-changes into brutal detuned hypno-metal.

The ultimate hardcore tribute comes via Boris's rampaging cover of the song "Fundamental Error" from Japanese punk legends Gudon, with awesome metal-tinged soloing and an overall overload of full-on Motorcharged power, with guitarist Katsumi Sugahara (Outo, Solmania, UFO Or Die) stepping into the fray with some scorched axe-attack. A definite highlight of the disc. But on the other hand, that rage is offset by detours into grueling sludge-metal like the serpentine ugliness of "Zerkalo", morphing from one slug-fucking slo-mo power-riff into another, pricked incessantly by needled guitar leads. More unusual combinations appear on one of the album's other highlight songs "HxCxHxC -Perforation Line-", which blends together the hardcore tempos and bellowed vocal spite with a maelstrom of shoegaze-esque sound that transforms into a massive melodic bliss-out. The weird riffing and tempo changes on "キキノウエ -Kiki No Ue-" evoke a hallucinatory kaleidoscope of primal death metal heaviosity, titanic creepy-crawl Frostian breakdowns, and bleary 'gazed-out guitar noise. Then "Loveless" charges into the mix, a bludgeoning "bomb-string"-detonating sludge / noise-rock pummeler that's hybridized Boris-style with more anthemic hardcore and one of their uniquely gluey, earthshaking psychedelic sludge finales

The Third Man edition of the LP closes with the brief and breathtaking ambient moodiness of "Interlude" as Wata croons at her most ghostly over a bed of swirling low-end rumble and spaced-out effects. Can't stress just how much this scratches my itch - it unexpectedly became my favorite Boris album of the past five years, absorbing and synthesizing so many sounds that I'm addicted to. Definitely one of the heaviest and angriest things they've done in an age. It's a straight-up slammer, and highly, highly recommended.