Music > Live Reviews
Amenra & Boris
Norwich Arts Centre
18/02/18
It is funny how things pan out, isn’t it? After a crap day at work (I mean, not truly terribly, just tiring, dull and demotivated), I almost pulled couldn’t be bothered to do this. I managed to rouse myself in the expectation that Boris would be amazing, even though I also expected Amenra to be, well, a bit rubbish and didn’t even know that Jo Quail would be playing.
I am going to start off by coming over all hyperbolic and just, perhaps, a little unnecessary. Jo Quail delivers one of the most astonishing sets I have witnessed. Honestly, how can one person use a cello and a couple of pedal boards to build something that sounds simultaneously like a Clint Mansell collaboration with the Kronos Quartet, Sunn 0))), a troupe of Taiko drummers, a mix of the best of Constellation Records’ more “classical” releases and a pod of alien whales singing in the seas of Saturn? Messy as that may sound, it all works to produce music that is, by turns, ethereal, delicate, percussive and heavy. Equally at home in the classical arena or, as here, in a more experimental setting, Jo’s music is moving, beautiful and just, well, genuinely amazing.
Boris don’t like to be pigeon-holed as a metal band. True enough, having been together since 1992 and, including collaborations and soundtracks, having released 35 or so albums, there is more to what drummer Atsuo, guitarist/bassist Takeshi and guitarist/keyboardist Wata do than that. For all that, this basically takes the doom metal template established by Blue Cheer and Black Sabbath and later updated by the likes of Saint Vitus or Candlemas and turns it in to something that is equal parts endurance test and religious experience. By all the hells, this is LOUD. Bits of me I didn't know I had vibrate in sympathy with the wall of sound coming in waves from the PA. It feels like my earplugs have melted to my eardrums.
At their slowest, the riffs come out at the speed of continental drift. At their fastest… well, things don't really speed up for long. Boris certainly know how to put on a show, make an awesome noise (and that is awesome in the true sense of the word) and I am entranced, at least for the first few minutes. I am afraid to say that Boris fail the “how long have they been playing before I check my watch” test. The rule is that the longer into the set it is, the more I am enjoying it. For Boris, this is less than ten minutes. As fearsome and awe-inspiring as this noise is, it gets samey. Much as I admire and want to like this, I can't help feeling that Boris play amazing intros and outros but don't actually write songs. I suspect and accept that I am very much in a minority of one in this audience.
Before tonight, I knew next to nothing about Belgian post-metallers Amenra and what I did know suggested that they would not be my thing. Well, I got that wrong! Formed in 1999 and having released six studio albums and one live LP, the five piece and their Church of Ra have built up a following that seems almost more religious sect than simply fans.
After a lengthy intro, the opener commences with percussion straight from a blacksmith's workshop, builds into something not dissimilar to Mogwai's My Father My King before exploding into a full-on extreme metal riff-fest. Colin H van Eeckhout has a voice that ranges from a guttural, gargles-with-razor-blades hardcore grunt to an oddly sweet little-boy-lost croon, whilst guitarists Mathieu Vandekerckhove and Lennart Bossu mix heavy riffage and full-on screaming solos with more delicate sounds. The sound mixes shoegaze and post-rock with hardcore, extreme metal and more avant-garde sounds to create something that is raging and cathartic yet also spiritual and strangely uplifting. The only disappointment is that, thanks to a stupidly early start tomorrow I have to bail out 40 minutes into their set…