First Listen – Boris – Heavy Rocks + Attention Please (NPR)

NPR just posted a preview / full stream of two upcoming albums from Japanese band Boris – Attention Please and Heavy Rocks. Both albums are scheduled for May 24th release via Sargent House label.

You can’t really accuse Boris of slowing down. The Japanese heavy music trio hasn’t released a proper “rock” album since 2008’s Smile, but in the interim put out a split 10″ with the pop-metal band Torche, a collaborative EP with The Cult’s Ian Astbury and an excellent series of seven-inch singles called Japanese Heavy Rock Hits. But still, rabid Boris fans (and they are the collector types, mind you) have been waiting for something more substantial. Attention Please is just one of four — four! — Boris albums coming out this spring. Its release coincides with that of Heavy Rocks(not to be confused with the 2002 album of the same name) and two Japanese-only titles: another collaboration with noise master Merzbow called Klatter, as well as New Album, which frustratingly mixes tracks from Attention Please and the new Heavy Rocks with other material. Completists, the ball’s in your court.

Read more / check out the stream for  “Attention Please” here.

Digging further, Heavy Rocks — out May 24 — also celebrates that original release by digging, if ever-so-slightly, into the thick, distorted riffage that made Boris’ mark at the beginning of the last decade. The guitar tone isn’t quite the same, but, through the band’s move toward poppier song structures, the attitude is. And, instead of dodging around the glam-teasing of 2008’s uneven Smile, Heavy Rocks embraces glam with its own blistering approach to sonic excess. The one-two punch of “Galaxians” and “Jackson Head” is two Jack Daniel’s shots away from a Dodge Charger crashing through the living room. And if you need a rager, lead guitarist Wata doot-doot-do‘s her way through the barn-burning headbanger “Window Shopping.”

Read more / check out the stream for  “Heavy Rocks” here.