Boris - Dear

Intended as their farewell album for the ever-prolific Boris, Dear’s conception apparently produced another two records’ worth of material, which should probably come as no surprise given their massive and varied discography and their tendency to leave little on the cutting room floor. I imagine they’ll probably, even if they didn’t originally intend it, extend their farewell with that material, and based on how this one turned out, I totally wouldn’t mind that. Dear is a record closer to the experimental doom metal core of what Boris is generally built around, hearkening back to Noise and even further to Pink, and while they’re usually labeled as an experimental group, it was nice to hear Dear celebrating in a bit of familiarity for them. While it is a respectable and consistent effort, only parts of it feel like a farewell album, and maybe that’s because there’s more on the way. But the songs that feel like drawn out, sorrowful goodbyes in themselves are where the album shines. For me, the album starts off on its weakest foot with the slowly swinging chopped up amp drones of “D.O.W.N.”, which provides a numbing, melancholic opener, better completed by the monstrous heaviness and unfriendly throat-y singing of “DEADSONG” and the emotive vocals on “Beyond” and “Memento Mori”. While the rapidly churned out albums Boris have released do have a tendency to dwell in their respective homogeneous sound spaces transparent to the process in which they were created, I expected a bit more of a dynamic and meticulously groomed album than what Dear ultimately delivered, instead sounding similarly one-timed to much of Boris’ catalog. This doesn’t at all ruin the album, and I still like what I heard on it for the most part, but by the time the two longest tracks on the album roll around, they end up feeling like the extraneous tail end of an album that’s already finished what it set out to do. While I doubt this album is the conclusion to Boris, if it is, my hat is off to them: a fine band finishing nicely with a fine album. My feeling though is that we will be fortunate in hearing a little bit more of Boris before they retire, and if it’s indeed from the same stone Dear was cut from, I’m sure it will be sufficiently pleasing.