Oh Boris. The next album of their 2011 trilogy (they actually released a fourth one, a noise album with Merzbow that doesn’t deserve much attention) is named Heavy Rocks. It’s not called Heavy Rocks 2011, or anything like that. No, it has the exact identical same name as their April 2002 release. That’s not the most misleading thing about it though. What makes Heavy Rocks the oddest of the three is that in a lot of ways it’s not particularly heavy. The guitar and drums certainly are, to such a wild extent that it’s hard to take the first few seconds of the album seriously. But they’ve brought their more recent styles along for the ride.

Riot Sugar

What Heavy Rocks 2011 certainly is not is a full return to their stoner/doom roots. It’s something way more bizarre. Oh they turn up the distortion to the max and chug out deep dirty chords the whole way through, but somewhere in there it feels like they’re still playing the role of j-rock stars, floating around up in the sky somewhere. If the majority of the album is relatively in keeping with Riot Sugar, some of the songs are still more pop than anything else.

Window Shopping

I mean, if I called something “pop metal” it would normally be an insult–a reference to talentless mass consumer metal bands like Disturbed and Drowning Pool. But Boris take the notion more literally. This is the most unmistakable on Window Shopping and Tu, La La. I don’t think “pop metal” is their ultimate goal though. I wouldn’t say, from listening to it, that the album has anything so specific in mind. It just disregards the past, and unabashedly incorporates what Boris sound like here and now, which is a whole mess of different things really. The only real goal of the album, I’m pretty sure, is to be heavy. And to rock.

Aileron

Thus you get songs like Aileron. It’s unmistakably Boris, and stylistically it has a lot more in common with their early albums than with anything on New Album or Attention Please. But it doesn’t feel like those earlier works much. It’s underpinned by the dreamier qualities that they’ve recently adopted, for better or worse. I mean, this sounds like the breaking point of Flood III in reverse, like the water is all lifting up to the heavens. I really don’t know what I’m listening to on a lot of this album, and it took a while to grow on me. It has nothing of the immediate appeal present on the other two, but it’s good in its own unique way.

Galaxians

Galaxians is my favorite track, and it kicks off with some stoner metal more in keeping with the original Heavy Rocks than probably anything else on the album. But it still feels like it’s floating. The softer vocal style, that sort of laser gun effect they’re using, even the track title suggests something far from the earth. Maybe this song best represents what they’re going for. I think I’d have understood the whole album a lot better if they’d named it Heavy Clouds.

Heavy Rocks 2011 is my least favorite of the three, but don’t get me wrong. I really like it. Besides, Boris have a unique and coveted ability to never sound bad. It’s either really good or just really weird/experimental. Even at their worst (and I’m not calling Heavy Rocks 2011 that) they always reward us with something great somewhere down the line.

In 2011 that something great is called Attention Please, and I’ll be wrapping up this review series by covering it tomorrow.