Boris - New Album (2011)

After being silent for nearly three years, Japan's Boris returned with a vengeance in 2011, issuing three albums, all of which reappraise to varying degrees their original rep as a noise metal power trio. Attention Please and Heavy Rocks (the latter an extension of an album with that title from 2002) were released on the same day in May. Those albums were assembled from material cut for an abandoned offering. In turn, over half of New Album contains revisioned material from those records. It was issued earlier in the year in Japan in slightly different form. New Album goes one step further by combining the spacier sonics on Attention Please with the overdriven power riffage on Heavy Rocks. To accomplish this unholy marriage, the band hired dance-pop arranger and producer Shinobu Narita, who makes the most of his opportunity, glossing up the proceedings with relish and even abandon -- so much so, in fact, that less seasoned Boris fans may initially be hard-pressed to identify the band. Inspired by J-pop and its synthetic production techniques and sheeny surfaces, this mix places vocals way up front and guitars are moved more to a central rather than prominent place, save for a few tracks. It's a meld of dissonant rock harmonics, dance-pop, and indie pop, and it works -- mostly.