Oh boy. Hi everyone, Lawthony Suittano here, the Internet's busiest music nerd, and it's time for a review of the new Boards of Canada album Inferno.

One of the most groundbreaking, beloved, and mysterious groups to ever come out of the IDM and electronic music scene, they're back. Scotland's own Boards of Canada. This is their first album in over 10 years. Their last LP dropped back in 2013, which also arrived after a pretty large gap in studio albums, too.

But, being touch-and-go and giving fans as little as possible to go off of is kinda par the course for the sibling duo, especially these days. And of course, there are pros and cons to that. For one, I think it allows a more immersive experience with the music itself, even with these persistent nods to the occult and spirituality that, frankly, run a bit thin given that it is a concept. But then again, conversely, the lack of information and details has also led to a lot of speculation around the current state of the duo, their creative dynamics as of this record, as it does seem like the lion's share of the writing credits here are going to just one half of Boards of Canada — more Mike Sandison than Marcus Eoin.

And while I don't necessarily think reading into the cryptic vibes and Easter eggs in this record's promotional rollout is inherently wrong, in a way it does feel besides the point to focus on that over the music itself. But the music does sound surprisingly different from any other album Boards of Canada have dropped so far.

I mean, for sure Inferno lives up to the duo's reputation for eerie synth passages— the whole hauntology label, too. I mean, after all, some of the music on this record was used in that recently released Backrooms film that everybody's going crazy for right now. And absolutely, there are few albums you are going to hear this year that are going to come across as beautiful and slightly unnerving at the same time as this one.

But right out of the gate, it is very clear and very obvious that the duo's sound is sounding very high-def, as Inferno feels a lot less like I'm listening to interstitial music from a forbidden interdimensional public access channel, and a lot more like I'm listening to a big-budget soundtrack piece from an '80s sci-fi horror thriller. A direction that I don't necessarily mind in spirit, but I do think the execution leaves a little bit something to be desired. Which is weird, because this is typically the exact kind of thing Boards of Canada tends to nail down perfectly.

But when it comes to the first full song on this record, and what was also a teaser, "Prophecy at 1420 MHz," it is a track I liked, but the more I listened to it, the more it doesn't so much feel absorbed in the vintage style of progressive electronic music that it is clearly making gestures toward. Think something along the lines of a classic Tangerine Dream album. But rather than building on that, or embodying it in the most accurate way possible, possible, I feel like a lot of the time we are just getting, like, surface-level vibes. Or something akin to watching a Stranger Things episode, a show that very famously appropriates all sorts of different touchstones of '80s culture, but never quite actually authentically feels all that '80s.

I think it's also worth noting that in the past 10 years, there has been really no shortage of new and up-and-coming artists doing interesting things with progressive electronic music, and synthwave for that matter, many of whom, with their homespun production have gained very tiny but impassioned followings of fans. And even though Boards of Canada are certainly bringing more experience and production chops to the table than any dark synth rookie possibly could, that doesn't really change the lack of novelty and specificity this record is bringing in the big 2026.

Still, it is the case that if a record going in this direction were orchestrated and produced really, really well, I could get down with it. Who in their right mind would turn down some creepy analog synth porn in 4K? Especially when you get highlights like "Hydrogen Helium Lithium Leviathan" right out of the gate. A track that does leave me wanting a little bit more, especially as these heavy horn passages start to come in as the song fades out. But I can't deny that the journey along the way, every step of it, is enthralling, with all these layers of reversed sound effects, patient and stuttering basslines, melting distant tones echoing out into infinity, plus these plinky synth leads, too, that make me feel like I am the main character in a film where I am plotting an escape from the barracks of some kind of prison camp on a spaceship on the other side of the galaxy.

And again, I wouldn't mind a whole album full of cuts that scratches an itch similar to this one, but unfortunately I think the appeal of a lot of this record starts to take a nosedive just as the focus on these songs begins to shift over onto all of these very tedious vocal samples and spoken word snippets, which honestly I really get nothing from whatsoever, and mostly come across like a distraction from elements of the music and production I would rather be focusing on, or at least giving more breathing room for these compositions to shine and progress and vary.

Now, there are tracks featuring vocals and mixes like "Age Of Capricorn" that are so washed out to the point where I can really appreciate the atmosphere all of these layers of instrumentation exist within, even if the piece as a whole kind of feels like a movie trailer that lasts maybe just a bit too long. But then following this on "Father And Son," we have all these jittery, disorienting vocal samples set to lumbering beats, creepy synth arpeggios too, and the vocal placements here are annoying to say the least. If I wanted to hear something along these lines, frankly, I would listen to any number of albums from The Books. Because while personally I do like sample-based music and plunderphonics quite a bit, I just don't find Boards of Canada to be pairing these elements in an interesting way conceptually on this album.

On the track "The Word Becomes Flesh," for example, I feel like I'm just kind of hanging around on the Internet with too many tabs open on my browser, one tab being for a Bandcamp of a really cool underground IDM artist, and the other being for some kind of YouTube documentary video about a chicken embryo, I guess.

The vocal samples across this record aren't all bad, though. There's "Naraka," which features chant samples that bring an interestingly ritualistic feel to the heavy and ominous passages of beats and synths on this one. The track is just an awesome ocean of sound washing over me. There's also "Blood In The Labyrinth" as well. What vocal passages are featured on this track are very nicely and tastefully peppered in. It's not overbearing, and I like how there's enough room for these really twangy, dazzling lead plucky melodies to do most of the work on this track.

Then there's "All Reason Departs," which features some kind of garbled vocal passages right at the start of the track, which mostly serve as a tension-building tone-setter that eventually gives way to a really spellbinding piece progressive electronic music with a kind of futuristic twist. It really feels like a music bed that would have been seared into my memory as a child of the Y2K era, staying up late for hours playing, I don't know, militaristic strategy games like StarCraft, building bases, assembling infantry, that sort of thing. And in a sense, "Arena Americana" also feels like a piece of lost musical media from this era, but maybe less from a video game and more from the opening theme of an obscure detective show that was canceled after after one season.

Now, aside from these more monstrous, thicker pieces in the tracklist here, the record is also peppered with these ambient numbers that are shorter and have more of a sense of stillness to them, occasionally calling back to, I think, more classic eras of Boards of Canada too. "Memory Death" is certainly an example, also "Deep Time," which flows seamlessly into "All Reason Departs" in a way that I wish more tracks did on this record. That certainly would have made for a more immersive experience.

There's also "You Retreat In Time and Space," which does eventually develop into something a bit more melodic and groovy for sure, but there is an absolutely beautiful and breathtaking, glossy, heavenly intro to this track that I can't get enough of. And when that groovy percussion and guitar touches eventually do seep in, the music warms up in a way that you will find nowhere else on this album. It feels almost reminiscent of something Daft Punk would have done on Random Access Memories, but just a bit more composed and methodical and patient in the way that it develops and rolls out.

Outside of that one massive highlight, though, I will say most of these tracks for the most part are good to decent. They are fine. Not mind-blowing or anything like that. Passable. Certainly not great enough to buoy the overall quality of this project, especially considering a super inconsequential ending here. And "fine" being more or less my attitude toward this album on the whole.

And again, many of the tracks that featured very prominent vocal snippets to me felt very tedious, grating, almost pointless. The progressive electronic and more synthwave-flavored cuts kinda ranged in quality, but even at their best never quite felt as special or as distinct as anything the duo came up with in their salad days. Not to mention, I felt the tracklist on this record overall was a little bit of a hodgepodge to begin with, especially given the degrees of separation aesthetically between the tracks that felt like they were almost bringing the these eerie, haunting, droning, ambient, classic Boards of Canada vibes, and all the cuts that conversely were bringing more of a tone that felt akin to an '80s sci-fi soundtrack with just higher definition sounds and production quality. Which is why overall I'm pretty much feeling a decent-to-strong 6 on this one.

Anthony Fantano, Boards of Canada. Forever.