by William York Recorded in 1996, this album was Boris' full-length debut, and it showed right away that this band wasn't messing around. In its original version, it consisted of one 65-minute track of oozing, slow motion, Melvins -inspired drone rock. (The U.S. release, put out in 2001 by Southern Lord, adds an additional bonus track, the 7:50 "Dronevil." And talk about buildups, this thing starts with a full 25 minutes of heavily down-tuned bass rumblings and doom-instilling guitar feedback before the drums and vocals finally kick in with the big payoff. From there, the band moves through about 15 minutes of thick, fuzzed-out trance rock (again, mostly instrumental) before the drums exit again, leaving in their wake a howling, droning mass of layered guitar feedback. The sound of this is truly massive and unsettling. It takes a good 25 more minutes for the wreckage to clear and the track to finally wind down to a close -- it seems strange to say it, but anything less would have seemed like an abrupt halt, such is the magnitude of this track. The aptly titled "Dronevil"'s oscillating, distorted sub-bass drones are also menacing and impressive, although arguably a bit anticlimactic in this context. In any case, suffice it to say that this album is not for novices, but for anyone whose record collection includes Sleep 's Jerusalem , Earth 2 , Naked City 's Leng Tch'e , and/or more than a couple of the Melvins ' earlier LPs, this Mt. Everest of droning doom is probably a necessary addition.