There’s no expiration date on good music, but there is a certain flavor of regret reserved for discovering an awesome band through a midcareer album’s 11th anniversary show. Boris recently played the entirety of Pink at Tavastia, a noisy, smoke-drenched, perfect experience. I’d heard the name Boris before, but with the sheer volume of good music available these days, I hadn’t made time to listen. Finally stumbling across 2014’s Noise back in August, the regret was as immediate as it was short lived. The band’s particular mix of doom, psychedelic rock, and avant garde noise leaves little space for any sentiment other than pure enjoyment. Trying to pin down a band’s sound with an unfortunate number of modifiers results in some pretentious mouthfuls and is quite futile in the case of Boris’s music. The band has rejected genre labels wanting to escape musical pigeon holing. They’ve succeeded. Though generally heavy and held together by passages of drone and feedback, every album has a distinct character from the punk inflected energy of Pink to the evil noise of Dronevil to the total aural annihilation achieved by simultaneously playing both records of the Boris + Merzbow collaboration, Gensho.

Boris’s variation is a refreshing draft in the packed basement that is metal, where any band that’s climbed the steps to the ground floor of wider notice has a hundred competent imitators lurking. Boris certainly made it up those steps years ago, but imitators would be hard pressed to keep up. 2015 alone saw three albums and a collaboration.

As though that weren’t sufficiently prolific, they tour frequently too. Which brings me back to Tavastia. I’d been anticipating the show for a month, but when November 18 rolled around, I had no idea what to expect. I missed most of the opening act, but snagged a raised spot on a bench while everyone else grabbed drinks between bands. Tavastia was packed to the back, but with a little forethought, even my short self secured a clear view of the stage. Behind the sprawling drum kit, a large, burnished gong promised good things to come.

The promise of that gong delivered in full. Shrouded in theatrical amounts of smoke that swallowed the orange of the stage lights like a  Kurosawa hellscape, Boris tore into Pink. The band delivered the hooks and familiar riffs while reinventing the overall shapes of songs, improvising a unique performance with the easy grace of musicians at the peak of their craft. Drummer Atsuo infused the performance with crazy energy, bouncing between drum kit, flourishes on the gong, and the snarling of a noise producing white box. Guitarist Wata vied for my attention with snakey melodies and complicated progressions. Takeshi underpinned it all with massive drone on the bass and the occasional harmonic response to Wata on the guitar portion of his double necked instrument.

Despite perching on a narrow bench, I couldn’t help but dance. Packed as the club was, no one could hold still. Heads bobbed and hands waved above the billowing smoke. The musicians were little more than silhouettes placing the focus entirely on the music that set the air shivering and the body vibrating in time.

An hour was not enough, and the band came back for a long encore that nonetheless left the crowd shouting for more. I left Tavastia with the musical high still in my step and a little bit of that regret remaining – how was this only the first time I’d seen Boris and how long would I have to wait to catch a show again?