Bokor
Anomia 1

StefanoHab is back. Bye bye. Hooray hooray. Buried under a sea of things to do, between watching the moon and listening to the albums that day by day join the crowd with their little siblings that have accompanied me for 5 years, since I started hoarding CDs like crazy (or "a muntone," as we say in my parts in Taranto), and EVERY NOW AND THEN studying for some small university exam. Trifles.

The fact is that the Jerk (me) hasn't written on DeBaser for months and months now, and the only plausible reason I've written such a preface, which obviously nobody gives a darn about now or ever, and why I'm getting back to tapping the keyboard at this hour of the night with a touch of youthful excitement to rewrite a review like in the good old days… is that I have something in my hands… that is worth reviewing. Something worth staying up for, putting down a few lines, hoping someone out there can hear you. Something worth stepping aside for, staying silent, opening Dumbo-style ears, and LISTENING (capital letters were mandatory at least this time).

The Bokor are a reality that I have unconsciously desired for far too long. In my opinion, no musical omnivore has ever dreamed of encountering in their life a band capable of blending the most disparate influences with surgical precision, staging riffs of uncommon personality with non-standard naturalness and originality, and evoking a stunningly "homogeneous" potpourri of the bands they most appreciate. I was 15 or 16 when I dreamed of a band like this. Now I'm 20, and I've found them.
Swedish, dang it. I aspired to have such a band in Italy, but I have to once again acknowledge that the guarantee reigns supreme in Scandinavian lands. "Bokor," however, has nothing Scandinavian about it; it's a Haitian word that refers to a type of wizard or voodoo sorcerer (which inspires the lyrics of the third song), who practices evil magic and seizes the Gros Bon Ange (great guardian angel), one of the two parts of which the human soul is composed, transforming it into a sort of "spiritual version" of the common zombie from B-series horror movies, first keeping it in a dormant state and then using it as a strengthened body slave.

The band itself admits that the movie "The Serpent and the Rainbow" inspired this character for their music, but it turns out that industry insiders seem to believe it's the band itself that performs voodoo magic with two drumsticks instead of a magic wand, with a bass, two guitars, and above all, a voice that knows how to become an instrument and live within the songs as is rarely heard…
We talked about contamination between bands. So far so good, but… which bands? Let's start by saying that the album's introduction, the initial punch, is given by a track exquisitely Mastodon in mood and structure, c'est à dire, the most advanced you can expect from today's thoughtful metal. Then everything stops, and the voice becomes the protagonist, doubling and transforming into something very close to the golden System Of A Down, but if possible even warmer and more transcendent. Always with two guitars that never give up and accompany Lars Carlberg's voice to a state of absolute ecstasy, which falls back into bizarre structures, as if the System Of A Down themselves had decided to take a more rocking, postcore-esque path (spare the jokes) and strangely, more extreme.

"Crawl" is all of this. And the System influence becomes palpable in the subsequent moment of ethereal calm that manages to soothe the senses and excite them simultaneously, and if this isn't a true demonstration of Class & Talent, then tell me what is. Mystical. The next "Best Trip" confirms the idea. I could revel in its opening riff and that splendid riff closure I've wanted to hear for years, and it was only composed on the verge of 2007. Impressive groove. And the song goes on without leaving a breath, with a pop-like interlude, only to spill into hard rock riffs wisely dosed with mastery that, alas, would make many sacred monsters jealous… and the final solo perfectly seasons it all. "The Island" starts with pure hard rock attack to return to the System, with the unmistakable nasal timbre, and with a chorus that warms the heart, and know this before listening to it. Wow, what's happening? They're going crazy. Mastodon boldly reenter the scene, and now it's "volatile for diabetics" (Lino Banfi teaches). I'd describe the end of the piece as liturgical. More than voodoo. And the guitars play tag, and we enter the most experimental area of modern post-core.

The following "Covert Intro" literally marked me. Wonderful, folks. Calm and spiritual beginning with ancestral choirs (and at this point, I'm so hyped that I seem to see Tira’s legs in SoulCalibur 3 moving provocatively and alluringly…), and the guitar itself becomes "alluring" like a beautiful girl belly dancing two centimeters from your pretty face. A breath of the chorus gets lost in the tribal and oriental rhythms of the piece, with Lars's voice as the pain's maid. But then that chorus returns, one of the best I've heard in a long time, sweet, romantic, a caress to the soul. I listen to it again immediately afterward because I can’t resist, I'm about to shed a tear. And Lars's voice twists and dives into an attack style similar to Rob Flynn in Machine Head's latest album but much more dramatic, and then they go crazy, recalling the ever-present Mastodon. But how can we not see the shadow of Tool in all of this? It's not just Serj Tankian that Lars takes after, but especially the good old Maynard… The same goes for the sonic enclosure of certain guitar passages. Pure delight, whether instrumental or sung. And at the end of the piece, Lars pants before the final solo. But who the heck are these guys… I don't think such a band could exist; it's hallucinatory. Yet it does… Even the ghost of Opeth hovers over all this, count on it…

"Migration" is the almost-final blow. A 15-minute masterpiece between ambient guitar to and fro, taking us back to the '70s, Genesis's prog, Pink Floyd's psychedelia, Porcupine Tree, etc., etc. Liturgical, ancestral, wonderful. I don't feel like continuing. The piece continues on very high levels and explodes in the finale, with an attack that destroys everything and the appearance of a growl accompanied by Lars's clean voice before an obsessive and oppressive final riff that envelops sweetly… And with the last "Avert Your Eyes", they go back to hitting hard, the song absolutely closest to Tool in the entire album in my opinion, a to and fro of devastating groove guitars, and it's hard to come out unscathed… "Anomia 1" leaves you confused and uncertain, and you wonder how it was possible. A debut. Folks, we're talking about the first album, and it seems that there were ten others preceding it, so much is the meat put on the fire, the class, and compositional mastery.
The bottom line is that I would never have come back here to indulge in a review on DeBaser just a few days before a couple of exams that are torturing my mind and brain if the album reviewed here wasn’t… special.

A special album. A gem. No need to define it in any specific way. It must be listened to. At least once in a lifetime, at least as a whim, it must be listened to carefully before going back to fooling around with books and PlayStation. Just as our rockier parents occasionally dust off the old Rolling Stones vinyl, one day we will be able to tell our kids, "when I was your age, there was a group called Bokor…" I’ll bet my hand this album will end up that way.
Good night and good luck.