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Absolutego - Special Low Frequency Version

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Boris

 
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Absolutego - Special Low Frequency Version
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Avg: 3.5 (88 ratings)

Dig it: Metal so heavy it doesn't even move.

  • We Say...

    In the early '90s a guitarist from Seattle named Dylan Carlson who fronted a group with the appropriately tectonic name Earth, made the connection between the doom rumblings of metal bands like Black Sabbath and the avant-garde drones of composer LaMonte Young. Earth's brand of ambient doom became its own genre, and no one has taken it further out than Japan's Boris. 1996's Absolutego is heavy metal that's been fossilized, petrified, frozen. It's 60 minutes of agonizingly slow riffs that toll like church bells, rock music that would need to be about 100 beats per minute faster to even, you know, rock. It's the last word in this sort of thing, which hasn't stopped a legion of bands from trying to top it.

  • They Say...

    Recorded in 1996, this album was Boris' full-length debut, and it showed right away that this band wasn't messing around. In its original version, it consisted of one 65-minute track of oozing, slow motion, Melvins-inspired drone rock. (The U.S. release, put out in 2001 by Southern Lord, adds an additional bonus track, the 7:50 "Dronevil." And talk about buildups, this thing starts with a full 25 minutes of heavily down-tuned bass rumblings and doom-instilling guitar feedback before the drums and vocals finally kick in with the big payoff. From there, the band moves through about 15 minutes of thick, fuzzed-out trance rock (again, mostly instrumental) before the drums exit again, leaving in their wake a howling, droning mass of layered guitar feedback. The sound of this is truly massive and unsettling. It takes a good 25 more minutes for the wreckage to clear and the track to finally wind down to a close -- it seems strange to say it, but anything less would have seemed like an abrupt halt, such is the magnitude of this track. The aptly titled "Dronevil"'s oscillating, distorted sub-bass drones are also menacing and impressive, although arguably a bit anticlimactic in this context. In any case, suffice it to say that this album is not for novices, but for anyone whose record collection includes Sleep's Jerusalem, Earth 2, Naked City's Leng Tch'e, and/or more than a couple of the Melvins' earlier LPs, this Mt. Everest of droning doom is probably a necessary addition.

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