The Tiger

For an entire semester now, I've enlightened you schlemiels and opened your ears to music beyond the mundane offscourings that plague your playlists. While I can tell that I have made a positive difference on the campus of Clemson, hearing quality music from the stereos and iPods of our student body is even more of a rarity than reading something funny in The Almond. Even for someone as perspicacious and categorically immaculate as myself, I'd feel much less challenged trying to prove the fallacy in Pierre Wantzel's claim that trisecting an angle with a mere compass and straightedge is impossible. However, I believe it was the Latin poet Horace who said, "Life grants nothing to us mortals without hard work." While it's obvious that the quotation doesn't necessarily apply to me (for I am no mere mortal), Horace was on the right track.

The other day, a fellow (nay, subaltern, for fellow implies equality) student and Tyler Mills fan approached me and, after wheedling me with praises and compliments, asked why I hadn't yet covered a band in the metal genre in this column. He wasn't the first; I've had a number of metalheads express concern that I have ignored their preferred genre of music. Well, now the headbangers can rejoice, because this week, I've decided to dilate upon a Japanese doom-metal band by the name of Boris.

Boris isn't your older brother's faded-jeans-and-bleached-mullets heavy metal band. On the contrary, these three sludge rockers owe more to the grunge movement that helped to bury the heavy metal of the 80s faster than Buta-ul could cache his treasure from Pippin. Taking their name from a Melvins' song, Boris purloin from a variety of genres, including droning post-rock and psychedelic metal to craft their unique, Japanized sound. Don't let the homeland fool you into lumping these guys into the retracted realm of anime; these guys would impale Pikachu on their guitar necks and then use his blood-soaked lightning tail as a pick.

Because the tracks vary so greatly from one song to the next, a sort of staccato effect results that helps it appeal to a wider audience. Even indie rock scenesters who cry at night to the Arcade Fire and Death Cab for Cutie might find it cathartic to rock out once in awhile, and Boris gives them the perfect outlet to do so while still maintaining their counterculture credibility. And for the Metallica-loving heavy metal fans out there who consider Queens of the Stone Age to be their "chill-out" music, Boris manages to turn their amps up past 11 on enough occasions to satisfy even the deafest of ears. Pick up a copy of Boris (I suggest "Akuma No Uta," if only for its clever recreation of Nick Drake's "Bryter Layter" album) this week and give praise to the god of rock: me.

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