Boris
Smile

You'll smile right away when you see that innocent little heart on the cover.

You'll continue to smile (this time a bit more bitterly) when you realize from the opener, "Messeeji", that behind such an "easy" cover lies an album that is neither "easy" nor "hard", it's just "whatever": a march without head or tail with a panzer-like cadence driven by a massively pumped and caveman-like bass that gets contaminated by anything that could contaminate: highly saturated fuzz, searing electronic slashes, and feedback that shoot off like rockets and bounce crazily here and there until your head explodes.

Undeterred, you’ll keep laughing (to keep from crying) when you realize that it's just the beginning of this torture for your eardrums. "Hanate" (a tremendous hell of distortions that closes with fucking acoustic arpeggios[!!]) and "Tonari no Sataan" (a jumble of heartbreaking melodies [!!] alternated with another substantial amount of lethal "sonic dirt") will make you curse these three lunatics more than "Kare Hateta Saki" will, because at least it seems to say "I am an unlistenable hell of the most badass noise and do not try to pretend I'm not to shove it up your rear even more violently".

It's hilarious for me to imagine you when you listen to "Hana, Taiyou, Ame", a cover of fellow countrymen Pyg (a Japanese supergroup, heroes of the "Group Sounds" era), and you'll be flabbergasted at the thought that even these three crazies can have a little heart (the one on the cover) before being kicked back to reality by a track like "Buzz-In" (a sort of trashy 80s hard rock that becomes yet another sonic chaos). Your ears will be quite tired, but "Kimi Wa Kasa o Sashiteita" and the closing eponymous final track (written with four hands together with their inseparable and equally crazy buddy, Stephen O'Malley) will prevent you from breathing that fateful sigh of relief because you'll have to endure almost half an hour (nine and nineteen minutes in length respectively) of unstable and wavering sounds typical of the most self-indulgent drone.

I smiled too when I realized that during the listens of this "Smile" I never understood a damn thing but it was a tremendous pleasure, and you'll smile too, finally, at the idea that, when you want to face the drug to not retreat into reality, you could ask these Japanese lunatics for a bit of stuff and you’ll know you're making a safe bet.