Amplifier Worship

Boris | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (March 11, 2003)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Southern Lord
• ASIN: B000083MF6
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  Vinyl  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #164,640 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Your Love is Like a Truck, July 12, 2006

By 

t-diggs "blend77" (Brooklyn, NY USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Amplifier Worship (Audio CD)

This Boris album is a great and lumbering beast. Sneering with rows of teeth, gleaming darkness in its eyes, about to devour the world you once thought was so safe.

It starts with the aptly titled "Huge". this song is nothing but, HUGE. Lacking a traditional song sturcture for the first 7 or 8 minutes, it just repeats a massive crushing riff, doubling over on itself, and just when you think "Hmmmm, a Sunn 0))) rip off" drums come pounding in at a snails pace. The space between the notes is what really grasps you on this tracks as chords ring, distorted and distended for moments on end....This is the genesis of the aformentioned beast. And a great intro to an enormous album. At 9 minutes you are feeling uncomfortable, dont worry, you are getting appropriately prepared for utter devastation.

Ganbou-Ki sets the tunes into action with an incredibly anguished howl and more downtuned lurching guitar and devastating drum and bass pummel before skirting off to the sides of your sanity with a heavy hypnotic bass section. This part of the song, long and unhurried, quiets down the immense pressure put on it, only to add pyschedelic feedback and tribal drumming, and a mounting tension that threatens the quiet security one might find in this piece....Warped guitar soloing enters after a period of almost tranquil and interminable quiet and the bass and drums begin setting the stage for a second pummeling. This track is 15 some-odd minutes long and by now you should understand whether or not you are ready to put up with this kind of self indulgent doom. If not, Bail NOW!. If you do have the patience, please continue for a sonic adventure sure to keep your ears ringing.

Hama picks up where Ganbou-Ki left off, with a little eerie chirp that sounds like crickets before exploding into full on sludge punk that has a very industrial pounding feel. Then, taking a sharp left youre treated to more hypnotic psychedelics and another build which leads back to the beginning of the song, with almost chanted vocals and a great break. 6 minutes for this, the shortest track here.

Kuruimizu begins with another punk workout with some particularly vicious vocal delivery. You must be sweating by now, yes? Lets continue: Sludge punk then becomes the darkest march to the afterworld with martial drumming and a thick lead that dissipates into one thick guitar and some evil whispering. If the first track is to be likened to our beast that we described, then track 2 and 3 are that same beast wreaking doom and destruction on the world it is intent to devour. Then Kuruimizu is the death of that world. The passing of the world into darkness. This darkness comes in the form of a shimmering post rock build that will have the most solid of Godspeed You! Black Emperor fans impressed. A very trippy affair and yet still completely in line with the hell that had been unleashed just 30 minutes before....This extraordinary section almost makes you feel hopeful before leaving you with a flatline feedback drone and the grim realization that this world is now the beast's world and we are naught but a shimmer of the past it once was.

This realization is known as Vomitself, track 5, in which the world is nothingness. A dark hell carved out by the beast, rendering hope and light into dust. Blistering feedback and the most dropped tuning and droning you could imagine this side of the Sunn.

The album as a whole has many analogies that one could make in describing the ebb and flow of emotions here. The sound and progression are top notch quality played by musicians who have a clear idea of what they wish to achieve. The album plays as one long song split into 5 parts that total over an hour of music, so it is truly best to commit yourself to the experience by listening on good headphones or a good stereo and making sure you have the full amount of time needed to absorb this hulking monolith of doom. If you do this, you will surely be taken places, some places maybe you dont want to be taken, but nonetheless a glimpse of a place you wouldnt happen across unless you went looking for it...A darkness, without and within.

If this album pleases you, then I give you this caveat: Boris fans know that Boris is a chameleon of metal, rock, doom, and stoner sludge. Choosing which album to listen to is like picking out what you want to feel. If you want more of the same, then I highly reccomend you seek out their latest "Dronevil - Final" from Inoxia Records, and for a lighter taste, the ambient drone of "Flood". If you want the Boris displayed on their latest and great album "Pink", then you should look to the albums "Heavy Rocks" and "Akuma No Uta"...They have a much more rock an roll feel, ala Sabbath and Motorhead, that is extremely pleasing. But wait! Theres more! They also have a "soundtrack" to a made up film called "Mabuta No Ura" which I would place next to Godspeed You Black Emperor and Mogwai in terms of mood and tone. They also have a few even more avant-garde albums such as their collaborations with Japanese noise specialist Merzbow (Three albums total) and another with Keiji Haino and then theres the first album and an extremely thick slab of hell, "Absolutego"

"Amplifier Worship" satisfies on many levels for its foray into many of the territories that Boris has staked a claim in on their other albums, but if you are looking for a band to keep your interest and you are into a variety of rock and metal styles than Boris is a band that will keep you running to catch up and see what they do next.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Wait for 2nd pressing, March 12, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Amplifier Worship (Audio CD)

This album SHOULD be godlike. In fact it is. However, the pressing on Southern Lord has 2 second gaps between all the songs, and the entire cd is supposed to flow together. Therefore, you get nasty annoying 2 second interuptions that jar you out of the trance into which this is meant to put you. Seek out the import or wait for a 2nd Souther Lord pressing. Pity that once we finally get this at a non-import price it has to be flawed.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Just can't be loud enough, June 6, 2004

By 

davyboy (berkeley, ca usa) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Amplifier Worship (Audio CD)

If there is such a thing as transcendental metal than this album is its purist form. Assaulting "Melvins-like" guitar riffs give way to almost somber melodies and then return. Introspective and thought-provoking -- it is a gem in any collection.

Buy it!