Pink Boris
Southern Lord; 2006
originally published September 25, 2012 on Probably Just Hungry
Of all the things the color pink brings to mind — Victoria’s Secret, feather boas, lip gloss — the last item on the list might be Southern Lord Records. The website for the metal-heavy label, whose menu sidebar is titled ”grimoire” and decked out with a ritualistic goat skull, is swathed in black and studded with grungy fonts naming bands like ”Tangorodrim” and ”All Pigs Must Die.” This is an ecosystem separate from pink aura of Lisa Frank’s puppies and unicorns or the pastel microcosm of Anne Geddes’ cutesy (read: creepy) baby portraiture. Still the disparities don’t stop Japanese band Boris from appropriating the name for their 2005 LP, who actually managed to release the title on Southern Lord and make the clashing ideals work. Pink is pink — you get it. The whole thing is tinted with the eponymous color, which may or may not be the point at which you stop looking. It is a bold statement after all, and the intricacies of the artwork just might be moot — strong visuals, instantaneous message, hints of irony, done. But Pink does go further than shock value in this regard. The font of cover is a strong announcement of the band and the title, but it’s created with relatively thin and disjointed strokes, hinting at some sort of fractured delivery. The background image is a biblical-esque scene of a winged angel/demon carrying out some act of consecration/desecration on a headless body — the details are vague, but whichever way the action leans, it’s a scene of somewhat sensual violation as read by the winged being’s languid expression, and it further points out the inherent contrast between visuals. "Farewell" As far as album openers go, ”Farewell” is one of the best. From the moment the track starts, you can hear all reverb and delay units start their snowball runs as whooshes and whirs creep in from all angles. And then, the crunch comes in with all its drone-y goodness, followed by buried vocals in a foreign language. The slow pacing and throbbing rumble come together rather beautifully, as
as promised on the cover, Boris wears their influences on their sleeves on this one. Of all the sounds that coagulate on this track, the ones that stand out the most to me are the slow attack-y distorted guitars and the not-quite-loud-enough vocals, hallmarks of the shoegaze genre and originally made famous by, of course, My Bloody Valentine. It stands, then, that ”Farewell” might be the mission statement of the band on Pink — to pay tribute to their forebearers and inspirations, all while innovating a sound that defies the boundaries of the metal genre and the color pink. "Afterburner" There are cuts from the album that exemplify what you might expect a metal band to sound like. One such cut, the title track, kicks in so close to the slow-cooked growl of ”Farewell” that it might incite sudden-onset headbanging-induced whiplash, and another, ”Blackout,” is so sludgy, you’ll track Satanic mud through your living room after just one listen. The song above, ”After- burner,” comes closer to ”capital-M Metal” than the aforementioned ”Farewell,” but the dynamics behind the track’s odd bluesy riff and chorus of mumblers suggest a slow-motion schizophrenic fugue. The chugging rhythm and irregular melodies bounce around in inner space, like a druggy internal monologue. That violation of personal space just might be the type pictured on the cover — private, invasive, and maybe a bit sensual (if you’re into that sort of thing). Of course, this only scratches the surface of what Pink has to offer. This is the type of album that takes a while to sink in, on account of how many things the band tries to do with their sound. Other cuts not to miss are the classic barn-burner ”Woman on the Screen,” the strange, Yo-LaTengo-esque (!) sound clip of ”My Machine,” and the 1 8-minute meth-and-mescaline anthem of ”Just Abandoned My-Self.” Needless to say, this is a jigsaw puzzle of an album — artwork and all — and the kind where you can’t seem to find the corner pieces.