ULU, London
23 April 2008
Ah, what better way is there to celebrate St George’s Day than to avoid all the jingoistic flag-waving nonsense and go and see a band who come from the other side of the world? Probably none. None whatsofuckingever.
First up we get Growing, who I heard described by someone in the queue as “a friendlier Black Dice”. That’s not far off the mark, really. True, a lot of it’s just “I could do that!” noodling, but when they lock into a motorik groove there’s something really quite jaunty and hard to dislike about the whole affair. And then there’s the part where a Beefheart-esque guitar phrase gets fucked with, and you suddenly feel like you’re trapped in a factory. A factory making clowns. ROBOT CLOWNS OF DEATH. And it’s all a bit scary. But still a lot of fun.
Now, I’ve got this awesome idea for the next Indiana Jones movie. Check this out. Bricks will be shat. Indy goes on a quest to find the legendary Hammer Of The Gods, much renowned for its abilty to, well, smite the shit out of stuff. It was last seen in the 1970s, in a bizarre joint custody deal between Jimmy Page and Tony Iommi. After a series of adventures, Indy finds out the location of the Hammer. And it’s in Japan. And Boris have got it. Add a car chase and a romantic interest subplot, and you’ve got box office gold, my friend. Box office fucking gold.
And boy, if it isn’t true. Boris rock. By the time they’re three tracks in, playing the title track from Pink, they’ve reached a level of intensity that they don’t depart from for the rest of their set. Going from Guitar Wolf-esque thrash-punk shenanigans to delicate J-Pop balladry without breaking stride, they prove themselves to be masters of all speeds. The only other band I can think of who manage to cover all genres of metal within ten minutes are the mighty Mastodon, though there’s something a lot more delicate hiding within Boris’s apocalyptic roar. This is structured chaos, and it’s not hard to see why their collaboration with Sunn0))) was such an amazing combination. If Sunn0))) are masters of making amps do what they want, whether or not the amps want to themselves, then Boris do the same trick with guitars. As far as I’m concerned, there are only two people on the planet who aren’t in Boris who can make (double-necked, in Boris’ case) guitars sing, roar and everything else like this, and they’re Justin Broadrick and Kevin Shields. And if you can’t tell that that’s esteemed fucking company indeed, then you seriously need to sort yourself out.
Finishing, appropriately enough, with “Farewell”, (prior to which we’ve had an exemplary piece of crowd-surfing from Atsuo), they depart, leaving the stunned audience with the sense that they’ve just watched METAL. Not a metal band. Not a few metal bands. But METAL, in its purest, Platonic form. METAL ITSELF.
Alarmingly, I’m reminded of a recent conversation I had with about why bands never seemed to be loud enough these days, which concluded with us embracing the very real possibility that they probably were, and we’d just fucked our ears. Well, that’s not true. Boris were very loud. The downside is that now I think I have fucked my ears. Ah well. It was worth it.
“Hoo boy”, Indy will say just before the credits roll. “That Hammer Of The Gods is some hot shit”.
-Deuteronemu 90210 who is now pretty much deaf and may not be reviewing anything else for a while-
