Boards of Canada - Inferno (2026)

Finally, after over a decade of silence, the mighty IDM duo have finally delivered. The long awaited LP5 was teased around the web couple of times, even before the initial tape mailings of easter sunday 2026. Official social media accounts of the band liked a couple of "new album when" posts/comments here and there. Then, they mailed the mysterious tapes. THEN, they released a cryptic youtube video called "Tape 05" featuring a hopeful, emotional ambient piece juxtaposed with BOC-like imagery and religious themes. It was our first glimpse of LP5 and we all thought this is gonna be a much needed happy/hopeful album that can act as a musical consolation in these insanely depressing Times... Imagine how I felt when I found out that LP5 will be a literal hell album.

This album is a tricky listening experience. It's uneasy and emotionally complex and difficult - much more that any other BOC release, even "Geogaddi". What we have here isn't exactly dark, heavy, nor creepy, as an album called "Inferno" of all things should be. For me, the record sounds like trying to find some sense and meaning in the absurd, evil hellscape. This reflects the world we live in today… Unlike apocalyptic "Tommorow's Harvest", this LP tries to sound VERY human, organic and natural. The occult/spiritual/esoteric themes make it even more apparent. It kinda feels like it the apocalypse predicted in previous album already happened and now we live in drab, barren wasteland, trying to survive and find some light in it all - that's how "Inferno" sounds to me.

The intro to this album, fittingly titled "Introit" is a weird but extremely fun vignette, that absosutely never fails to bring a huge smile to my face. It's simply lovely and cute. It's very weird tho, because I don't really understand its conceptual inclusion here. It very quickly fades into "Prophecy", which contrasts with it a lot. But it is memorable and serves as a neat reminder that this is indeed a BOC record. Also, it really reminds me how their previous LP opens with "Gemini" and its startup sound/producent logo tag musical sensibility.

"Prophecy at 1420MHz", a lead single is an interesting pivot to a direction nobody ever expected the band to go. It's basically a synthwave track. I was skeptical about these vocal samples and very clean "Campfire Headphase"-esque guitar notes at first, but they've obviously grown on me a lot. Still, it's a brave choice for a single in my opinion, given that the album quickly abandons this dark, 80s-inspired musical aesthetic, and after the subsequent song "Hydrogen Helium Lithium Leviathan", it's pretty much absent from the record. It could be misleading, and since a lot of people didn't like the overall sound and vibe of the single, it might've thrown some people off of checking the record out when it came out. I'd choose a different song for a single but we'll talk about it later... Going back to "Hydrogen..."- it's a neat track with interesting, hard-hitting beat and hellish pads in the intro. I like to think that its title suggests as evil was natural and was one of the first things to happen in the universe. It's one of the simplest, most primal elements of the world, and it's very abundant. Anyway, this is one of the heavier songs here, mainly because of the pads and these arpeggiated dissonant notes playing over and over in a hypnotic manner. One of the most unique songs here is definitely the next one, called "Age of Capricorn". Its creative use of vocal samples further explores the cryptic esoteric themes. They really doubled down on these samples here. They sound so haunting and cinematic! I got chill the first time I heard the song. I really enjoy it's "chanting", evocative and primal sensibility. A lot of people didn't like "Father and Son" . I understand that the chopped-up samples aren't for everyone, but I enjoy them immensly and I'm happy that the band decided to further incorporate them into their musical vocabulary. There's only so much you can do as an IDM artist to achieve mysterious, hauntologic atmosphere - the band's style needs to evolve. "Father and Son" is a controversial but awesome song that I simply couldn't stop listening too the whole day I've heard it for the first time. I think that's wonderful!

One of the biggest gripes I see people have with this album is it's overuse of dense, airy synth pad soundscapes - and "Somewhere Right Now in the Future" really seems to be the embodiment of this. It admitedly comes up very filler-ish, if you can even say that about anything that BOC did... Usually I really like the interlude tracks, especially these from "Geogaddi" and TCH, but this album sometimes seems to have a problem with delivering a memorable and muscially interesting interlude. The next run of tracks is crazy. "Naraka" is definitely one of the most fun BOC songs ever. I saw somebody on reddit say that it sounds like you're slowly approaching the gates of hell and hear the people residing there chanting from behind the door. The hare krishna sample is fantastic and creative, and the beat along with the whole soundscape sounds just fiery and flaming. Then, the duo of "Acts of Magic" and "Memory Death" follow. These track too are fantastic. "Acts" is a perfect interlude track. It's fittingly hellish and intimidating. I especially like the use of flies/bugs buzzing sample, which helps to convey the aspect of hell as putrid and apalling place. The piece blends seamlessly into the next ambient track. The vibe is completely different here, but still really depressing and uneasy. "Memory Death" brings up the theme of loss and mortality in a very visceral, direct way - the ECG beeps, which I found very moving.

"The Word Becomes Flesh" is the absolute best song here, no question. I LOVE IT! I love the chopped-up sample and I adore the drum programming and synth work! The intro could've been a bit shorter tho, but that's just me. This should've been the first single all along, although now that I think about it, I think I understand their decission to release "Prophecy" instead of it. Interestingly enough when I first saw the tracklist on bandcamp, I thought the song is called "The World Becomes Flesh", which sounds whole lot more eldritch but much less biblical, which is how it's supposed to be received.

The songs "Into the Magic Land" and "Blood in the Labirynth" are not my cup of tea, but I enjoy the overall TCH-adjacent sound in them. This is where the record stops its with all the esoteric stuff for a moment in exchange for lightness and more human-sounding, organic sounds - like for example the citar from "Labirynth".

When I first heard "Deep Time" I got impossible chills. I've listened to "Tape 05" track countless times. This song got me through some rough stuff already and I've already kinda accepted that it's probably absent from this LP, since we all though it's gonna be "Father and Son" song because of the duration matching. Well, the song it's here! And it's extended with the seamless, atmospheric fade into "All Reason Departs". Like I said before, "Deep Time" provided all of us with at least a little bit of hopeful, positive sounding music when we needed it the most, so I will always hold this song dear.

At this point, the album's pacing isn't that great. The tracklist sometimes stumbles a bit, even tho I really enjoy all the coming songs. I don't know, maybe it's the sequencing, maybe it's the track lengths and composition, but I fell that it flows kinda weird... Anyway, "All Reason Departs" take us back again to fiery type of sounds, with all the sparsely spread (extremely BOCish btw!) arpeggio flurries and overall production. I also really like the delicate and warm electric guitar(?) notes that sometimes shine through already pretty bright and vibrant musical soundscape. "Arena Americanada" on the other hand, features some last dips into 80s music - the drums are very snappy and this reocurring synth motive seems very reminiscent of electronic/synth music of long by-gone eras.

The last true interlude on "Inferno" is "The Process", which I dismissed for days. Having recently read on reddit what it really seems to be about, I regard it as one of the album's absolute highlights. The robotic-sounding female voice speaks literal gibberish with 0 meaning and cohesion while some unsettling crowd noise plays in the background. Is this an allusion to slow but steady AI-induced downfall of humanity? And I mean, not the Terminator-style one, I mean th slow, capitalistic one that we slowly see today. Robot voice speaking gibberish really brings these images to my mind, especially in juxtaposition with all this musical background and depressing piano melodies.

We reach the end of this listening experience in "You Retreat in Time and Space", which once again brings some more positivity, warmth and calmness. Some people say this song has some Daft Punk vibes, which I definitely see even tho I don't really listen to this band. The wah-wah guitars and somewhat shy funkyness what starts after the extended SAW2-ish ambient intro is really neat and I love that the album has such moments. As the outro vignette, there's also "I Saw Through Platonia", which I think is a little bit underwhelming for a BOC outro. They usually ended with something much more memorable and monumental, like "One Very Important Thought", "Farewell Fire" or even "Semena Mertvykh". Heck, even "Magic Window" which is just a minute or so of SILENCE made more impact with its meaning and role in the entirety of the album it belongs too. "Platonia" seems like just another weird pad-centered interlude track. Its meaning is a mystery to me. It probably refers to "Plato's cave" motive, so it could be that maybe it's about realizing something or uncovering some truth about human life/death (a connection to the heartbeat sample), but I'm not really sure.

And that's a truly elegant and thematic way to end this review. This is a very uncertain and uncanny album in its sound. Musically is fantastic and definitely among the best ones I know (right now it's in my top3 BOC records tho), but I mean it all in terms of it's aesthetic and themes. Yeah, it has some incosistencies. Part of me thinks that brothers startet composing it during 2017-2021 80s revival craze, where stuff like "Stranger Things" series and Muse's "Simulation Theory" album were going on, hence the 80s synthy vibe of some of the tracks. Then they changed their mind and decided to make an evil "Campfire Headphase". It all makes a listener think that this LP really cannot decide what it's supposed to be. Still, it's very impressive and interesting listen. It contains motives and sounds of each BOC era and bring many new ones so that it shows that the band still has a potential to evolve and make fantastic music.

As I said earlier, "Inferno" is very fitting for the current times. We indeed seem to live in hell, albeit a very boring one. There's little flames and conventional torture happening, but the suffering is real. It's just hidden in our everyday inconveniences, in the news and in some of us. Everybody is confused and tries to live their life normally, finding closure and solace in spirituality, hope and little things that make they happy. I think the main statement that Marcus and Mike try to convey to us is that hell doesn't need to be all that dark. It's ultimately still a very human place.