Boris @ Brudenell Social Club, Leeds, 19 Dec

20 years after the release of their debut full-length album, Absolutego, and a decade since the release of 47-minute mind-blower Pink, tonight Boris make startlingly clear the flat-out psych rebellion of their heaviest album to date. The three-piece’s capacity to merge the nuances of multiple musical genres, to exist on the margins of conventional musical classification, all the while producing visceral sounds that transcend all that feels familiar – like the heavy smoke that engulfs them as they grace the stage – is as inspirational as music can get.

Set up on the venue’s floor, up close and personal with an anticipatorily buzzing audience thanks to the enormity of Boris’ intimidating backline onstage, Yorkshire alt-rock quartet Nope open the show with psychedelic melodies and distinctly experimental musical stylings. The perfect support for a band who exist outside of the realm of mainstream music, Nope’s poised psych-rock via the way of atmospheric shoegaze succeeds in flawlessly setting the scene for Boris, who take the stage a mere 15 minutes later.

Walled-in by a mammoth backdrop of Orange cabinets and heads and a landscape built up of the band’s classic instruments (namely an almighty gong, a drum kit, and a signature double-necked bass/guitar), Atsuo, Takeshi, and Wata appear on stage cloaked in silence and darkness, a jet-black cloud of self-assured androgyny. As the band begin to drone their way through what could be described as one of the loudest sets the Brudenell stage has ever seen, the adoring crowd morphs into a sea of devil-horn wielding followers, and the magic of Boris’ Pink is set alight.

This performance of Boris’ tenth and arguably most melodic album is every bit as infectious as it is awe-inspiring. Moving seamlessly through Pink with a smooth lack of artist/audience interaction (aside from a quick ‘cheers’ to the fans and a celebration of beer from Takeshi), they hush the rowdy crowd via Wata’s impressive playing and use of E-bow, and Atsuo’s hypnotic, crazed drumming. Indeed, Takeshi's reverb-drenched vocals on tracks such as Afterburner are a hymnal call-to-arms that managed to cut through the white-hot burn of the band’s inimitable instrumentation, with Boris swimming godlike in the centre of a pool of blue and pink hue.

It’s easy to see from this performance how such an accessible album – a devastatingly cohesive amalgam of doom, shoegaze, and scorching psychedelia – has earned the band a diversified wealth of fans the world over.