Few bands are as prolific as Boris. The Japanese trio has done everything from shoegaze to synthpop to drone to thrash metal to harsh noise to garage rock to punk to hardcore to post rock to rockabilly (probably—I’m not actually sure if they’ve done any rockabilly, but probably). The sheer mass and diversity of their output makes for some great moments, but it makes it very difficult to call any of their albums essential.
Sure, there are some legendary mile markers in their discography: most people point to Pink, I point to Noise. But for the most part, while their consistently enjoyable and impressive as a whole, most of the individual albums aren’t very distinctive from one another.
To that point, W is their twenty-seventh album—a number that doesn’t include their seemingly endless list of collaborative works. However, W feels unique enough even among Boris’s discography that it warranted adding it to my collection.
