''Dear'' is the twenty-fourth studio album by Japanese

experimental An experiment is a procedure carried out to support or refute a hypothesis, or determine the efficacy or likelihood of something previously untried. Experiments provide insight into cause-and-effect by demonstrating what outcome occurs when ...

band Boris. Released on 14 July 2017 through

Sargent House Sargent House is an American management company and record label based in Los Angeles. It was founded in June 2006 by Cathy Pellow, who is a music video commissioner for Atlantic Records and also owns a music video production company called Ref ...

record label, it marks the band's 25th anniversary. The music video for the track "Absolutego", which shares its title with the band's 1996 debut, was also released in May 2017. ''Dear'' was originally planned as a farewell album. Nevertheless, its sessions produced three albums' worth of material: ten tracks were cut for the record and the rest were reserved for future releases.

Composition

With ''Dear'', Boris craft "straight-down-the-line"

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stoner rock Stoner rock, also known as stoner metal or stoner doom, is a rock music fusion genre that combines elements of doom metal with psychedelic rock and acid rock. The genre emerged during the early 1990s and was pioneered foremost by Kyuss and Sleep. ...

and "protracted"

drone metal Drone metal or drone doom is a style of heavy metal that melds the slow tempos and heaviness of doom metal with the long-duration tones of drone music. Drone metal is sometimes associated with post-metal or experimental metal. Characteristics Ty ...

. Their

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heritage also returns.

Critical reception

Upon its release, ''Dear'' received positive reviews from music critics. At

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, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from critics, the album received an average score of 78, which indicates "generally positive reviews", based on 14 reviews.

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critic Thom Jurek wrote: "On ''Dear'', Boris again prove their mettle as rock leviathans." Jurek further described the record as a "proof positive that this trio are far from running on empty."

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's A.A. Dowd stated: "Even doom fanatics may yearn for a more consistent track list; one drawback to churning out new records at this frequency is that the output can be uneven, mixing the transcendent with the forgettable." Matthew Ritchie of ''

Exclaim! ''Exclaim!'' is a Canadian music and entertainment publisher based in Toronto, which features in-depth coverage of new music across all genres with a special focus on Canadian and emerging artists. The monthly Exclaim! print magazine publishes 7 ...

'' commented: "If you dig deep enough, it's an album filled with surprises from a band that continue to impress."

Track listing

Daymare 2CD

Sargent House CD

Personnel

Boris *Takeshi – bass, guitar, vocals *Wata – guitar, vocals, effects, echo *Atsuo – drums, vocals

References

{{Authority control 2017 albums Boris (band) albums Sargent House albums