Album review: Bo Ningen – s/t
I have been very fortunate to see Bo Ningen play live before and I must say they fairly tore me a new arsehole such was the intensity of their performance (in a positive way!). Naturally I was intrigued and hopeful to see how this energy would translate to the studio, so throwing away the press release, I stuck it on…
My first reaction was one that I had been fighting – disappointment. From the word go, it seemed nothing more than a cacophonous racket – albeit punctuated by a couple of songs providing moments of relative peace (the cutely entitled ‘Gasmask Rabbit’, ‘Post Yokai’ and the last track ‘Yuruyaka’) . Either this was poor or I was getting old. Having seen (and loved) Slayer earlier this year, I assumed it was the former.
Reluctant to give in so easily, I was determined to have a second listen. It didn’t help that the band are from Japan and thus every song is in Japanese. Long story short, the second listen became a third and then a fourth. I have no idea what the album is about. It could be a personal attack on me for all I know but that doesn’t matter. It is a musical journey of epic proportions. Where it is going, I have not the foggiest idea but by the end of it (fourth time round) I found myself really wanting to know who or what Yokai was and whether he lived or died. Of course you can make up your own narrative and if you have patience to listen to it at least twice, I’ll bet you 10,000 Yen that you will have your own story. A kaleidoscopic manga-fuelled fantasy of epic proportions no doubt (please no hentai!).
And it really feels like a musical journey too. I had flashbacks to listening to side two of Ritual de lo Habitual (albeit without understanding a word of the lyrics) and the almost jazz-like quality of the Mars Volta kept popping in to my head as well. It flows, it twists, it builds, it dips but it is very, very powerful and in my opinion very well worth the time invested.
It probably tells me what it is about in the binned press release but who cares about that?! All I care about is Yokai.4/5
Nick Clout
Out 8th November on Stolen Recordings
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