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Finale? FINALE!!

Here's some of those last reviews I need to get outta my system. And this time, for once, it's a DOWNER REVIEW for DOWNER PEOPLE in DOWNER TIMES.

I want to start off by saying I'm officially burned out on Boris. The japanese trio no longer interests me and have run their course. I guess only after so many pointless rare & limited releases & shitty live releases I'd stop caring, never mind the rave reviews where someone compared their riffage to Motorhead, which is nothing short of comically absurd. Pink was alright, but I'd take Kiss of Death over it even. Plus burn-outs like this happen. It's a way of life, a natural cause. No rhyme or reason, you just get tired of it. On top of that, there's like a million better bands that are better than Boris.

On top of that, ALL OF MY FRIENDS HATE BORIS. I've gotten most of my friends into bands but all of them think this is dumb wanker s**t. At least if you're into some shitty novelty act like ICP or GWAR, they can get into it in a comical way. Boris however are too unlikable, sporadic, alienating and pretentious for even me nowadays. It's headache inducing at best.

Let's start off with an album they painfully ended the year with...

Boris With Michio Kurihara - Cloud Chamber

When I first heard Rainbow and had listened to ghost and White Heaven, my only reaction to this was WASTE OF KURIHARA. On the bright side, his solos on Rainbow are decent, just shaky and UGLY.

But this? THIS!? This is a waste of the mighty Michio Kurihara. ******** it's a waste PERIOD. Plus on top of that everyone's playing guitars so ******** all if you know who's playing and a prompt [******** YOU for listening to it, so they might as well say.

The first track is 18 minutes of quiet minimalism with rare bits of percussion, so to give the drummer something to do. It's in tune to The Thing Which Solomon Overlooked album in it's quiet lack of any substance. Notably, the track dosen't neccisarily go anywhere and it feels like Kurihara is nowhere to be found. He may be there, but I'm not seeing it.

The second track however, until the last 4 minutes, is in tune to the Vein album. Noisy, sporadic, like Merzbow at his harshest except not as good. It's not exactly engaging and dosen't go anywhere. Even the noise version of vein kinda had a punk feel & a rhythm to it to kinda drag you in as it tore your eardrums to shreds. This is just a solo-happy wank fest. And it's boring as s**t. And maybe Kurihara IS in this, but it's hard to tell.

Now I could call worst album of the year, but this album's pretty much done itself in. IT's doubtful anyone will talk much of it for years to come, save for when some trash kid puts it one EBay and sells it for 92 dollars. Meanwhile, I'm gonna go listen to Ghost or something because the more I hear this, the more embarrrasing it feels to see such a quality musician waste his talent in this way.

1/7

The average Boris viewer would say at this point "Well, if you didn't like that...maybe you liked Rainbow. SURELY you liked Rainbow!"

Okay....

Boris With Michio Kurihara - Rainbow

Boris goes more psychadelic than usual and waste a quality guitarist in the process. Hell, when they collaborate with ANYONE it seems they bring out the worst in both bands.

Boris with Sunn O)))? Had 900 people on each track (And 899 of them playing this thing called a "guitar" wink and the best you'd hear is two. Except Etna and the track with Dylan Carlson I'm failing to see the greatness now. Also waste of Kim Thayil for bonus points.

Boris With Merzbow? Check and checkmate. Anybody who can bring out abortive s**t in a guy who composes noise needs a cookie.

And now this. Anyways, the album starts off with Rafflesia, a really irritating intro if you ask me. Takeshi's vocals seem to be horrendous here, like they just pull buttons and push the insides. Really monotnous.

Notably, the big gimmick was that Wata, the guitarist with the tits, SINGS. On the title track, a somber almost jazzy number, she sings. Her voice is a bit robotic, but also very gentle and quiet. It's almost easy. After two verses the ugliest ******** solo kicks in. And best of all it sounds like it can't even maintain, like they hacked this song into Guitar Hero then played the solo part wrong on purpose for maximum effect.

The rest of the album kinda drags out with plenty of filler instrumentals, some decent wanky solos and some great jazz-style drumming. It's just the flow of the songs and the vocals that turn me off. Oh, and the boxset that features 2 LPs with two HORRIBLE bonus tracks and a 4 minutes DVD for 225 dollars. It took months, I mean MONTHS for the bonuses to appear on download and people were shocked. Just goes to show people won't share s**t if it IS s**t.

In conclusion, I can see where people like Rainbow, but I just can't get into it.

3/7 for the album itself.
1/7 for bonus songs by default EVEN though I haven't heard them. I HAVE yet to hear a good opinion of them though.

At this point, your average Boris fan would say "You're KIDDING! You don't like RAINBOW!? Well, maybe you're into their balls-out rockin' stuff, how about that live album, The Wolf Creek one!?"

What about the Worf Creek?

B0R1S - Smile Live At Wolf Creek

You mean the crowd is cheering this time?! By jove, it's a ********' miracle!! HOLY s**t!! Okay, I won't lie, I did enjoy Smile but this live album I don't care too much for. It only feeds the horrible trend plaguing Boris in live form.

Unless you are physically in a concert venue staring at Wata's tits and china doll expressionisms, Atsuo's comical antics & stage dives, or Takeshi's scraggly teeth & double neck, don't waste your time with Boris live bootlegs. The show shave a tendency to sounds like total s**t plus the crowd is about as into it as the performers in their own robotic form.

The show covers over two discs and 90 minutes Smile in it's entirety with the B-Side, Pink, & Rainbow. Not a bad set, but it gets worse. First off, the music does sound like they recorded it through the drummer's a** and Takeshi's vocals are very rough. I was expecting that. I was also expecting Atsuo's grunts and howls to be clear but they sound shittier than everything! What happened!?

On a good note, they get a bit humorous with Message and do the goofy intro before busting out the butt-rocker. The songs do expand out into drones and psychadelics but the performance is as shallow and black as the VON "Tribute" on the cover and thejap smile cover done all black. It was cute and funny for about five minutes, but all the cover rip-offs are getting old. And fast.

To be quite frank, I read a shorter review that sums this up perfect.

"if you listen closely you can actually hear a bunch of bearded douchebags and girls who ride 10 speeds sucking this bands d**k"

HAH!
3/7

The Boris fan would say at this point "Well, maybe you're into the older more obscure stuff, like Absolutego, Heavy Rocks, Flood, and Amplifier Worship.."

Not if they can't even get that s**t right!

Boris - Boris Live Archives!

DEAR. GOD. I can understand any bias since it's on the Archive label and they put out lots of really good stuff (Earth, Bardo Pond, Khanate, Fushitsusha...okay, not really but they should!) . I've been wanting to hear it for years and the letdown hasn't been this bad in a while (I'm not naming previous letdowns. It's too depressing.). Three discs of inaudible garbage in what is supposed to be their "prime" and it goes average for over 100 dollars on Ebay. I could've paid the initial price of 38 dollars and cat-called. I won't lie, I downloaded the audio since I'm so chincy (It took me 2 1/2 years to even find said download link.). And if I cat-call a free listen, then I DAMN WELL ain't paying real money for it.

Disc one (Live 96-9 cool chronicles two songs from Amplifier Worship, all four tracks from the split with Barebones (The two live track from there are on here.) another split track and a compilation track. Early Boris tries to sound like an angrier, more gruntier Melvins but comes off a little stupid at times. Most of the stuf here is really inaudible and tepid, and Hama's noise solo just isn't cool anymore. Huge is really the only good track here.

Disc 2 (drumless drone power ambient disc, probably the gayest title this side of a**l c**t) is a plodding mass. Here we have Huge without the drums, which is fine and still painfully harsh. Mosquite is 20 minutes of your life going ******** nowhere with a mass of drone. Funny they pulled a Ween dragging out a 4-minute track over 20 but this isn't nearly as good. Vomitself works since it has no drums to begin with and is shorter. They should've just dragged THIS out 20 minutes instead of shorten it. That'd have made sense.

Disc 3 (Two Long Songs) takes the 65-minute Absolutego and 70-minute Flood and condense it to a 38 minute live set. Absolutego is decent here, missing a lot of it's drone and having Takeshi do the vocal part. Flood is also alright but the vocals are so off and going form screaming in one track to singing in another (Especially when you're a jap singer and you can't sing a lick to begin with). The quality is still pretty bad. I'm tempted to say I've heard better punk boots.

I think I have a headache, and by this point any reader would feel the same. But on the bright side, you've saved tons of money on a negative review and no cavemen's feelings were hurt in the process.

Disc 1: 2/7
Disc 2: 3/7
Disc 3: 3/7
Overall: 2/7

The Boris fan at this point is on the brink of losing it, probably mumbling with steam shooting from his ears. So I'll finish the job with one more hate review, which IS....(drumroll)

BORIS AT LAST! FEEDBACKER!

Every Boris fan loves this album. Except me. I'm bored to tears every time I listen to this album. Time and time again I've tried, though studio and live form, and time and time again I've failed to get into it.

For those who haven't listened to it, it's a single 43-minute track with an album cover depicting the guitarist lying in a pool of blood with plenty of cleavage. The music itself SLOWLY builds up from a minimalistic ambience to this rockin' long bit with plenty of solo-ing using an out-of-print pedal called the Feedbacker. It's layered, it's fuzzy, not psychadelic, but very rockin'. It ends very minimal and quiet too.

So why do I not like it so much? I dunno. The minimalism does little for me and the vocals seem to be annoying. It's funny as I listen to this I listen to Flood or Absolutego with great results, but this feels like a drag, like I want to fall asleep and not exactly in a heavenly way either. I can see how people like it but I guess I really am burned the ******** out.

3/7

I've hit the final straw and the Boris fans of the world would scream [******** YOU" and storm off. I doubt they'd try to kick my a**. And I feel pretty good now, like I vented all my rage and fury on something I got tired of. Give it about five to ten more years and NOBODY will be talking about this band.

Bonus Review! Boris Vs. Doomriders: Long Hair And Tights!

As bad as most of the stuff here is, NONE of it really compares to Long Hair And Tights. I just ask one beggin question to the Boris listener...Do you like Pink?

Not THAT Pink, you klotz. You haven't been getting any of that. I mean the Boris album Pink. If so, this is the live album....for YOU! Six songs from that album and Ibitsu.

Better yet, it was put on 2LP on a great japanese label for nearly 50 dollars. Now 50 dollars for ANY 2LP is ******** ridiculous so what did they do to curb this pitiful live album?

Easy! Bring a horrible hardcore band along for the ride, add a stencil, and rip off a clasic Judas Priest album cover in the dumbest way possible! 50 dollars for this and it probably goes for 500 on EBay now!

Boris' side is so comically awful for so many reasons. First off, it sounds bootleg-quality at best, which usually is fine but this band works terrible under s**t quality. Second, atsuo's in full nutzo form for most of it making this stuff hilarious. Lastly, Wata's solo in Ibitsu is perhaps the only bright spot of the whole thing musical wise, it ******** grinds and I bet she showed no facial emotive in performing it either. Again, a waste.

Doomriders are an american hardcore act and the music is angry and fast and yelling. They have a song on here called ******** THIS s**t. Fitting title. It's exactly what I'd said after I had heard it.

Boris' side: 2/7
Doomrider's side: 1/7