On the 25th year of their existence, Tokyo’s amplifier worshipping experimental metal trio Boris delivers Dear, an album they describe as “heavenly—far beyond heavy.” We don’t feel comfortable calling Dear a return to our slow and heavy style, we’ve been heavy since day one.” And it’s true.

Songwriting for Dear initially yielded three albums’ worth of material by the end of 2015, but as the band was slated to spend a large chunk of 2016 on their “Performing Pink” worldwide tour, they decided to hold off on releasing any new material. The tour rekindled their passion, and when the band returned home they wrote several more songs and scaled the three records down to one. “At the very first moment, this album began as some kind of potential farewell note of Boris. However, it became a sincere letter to fans and listeners… you know, like ‘Dear so-and-so, this is the new album from Boris’ or something like that. We feel so grateful we can release this album in our 25th anniversary year.”