Lightning Bolt
http://laserbeast.com

styles: rock & roll, hardcore punk, metal
others: The Psychic Paramount, Parts and Labor, High On Fire

Hypermagic Mountain
Load, 2005
rating: 5/5
reviewer: willcoma


What's with the lukewarm response to Psychic Paramount? Because the two best tracks on there mop the floor, in terms of sheer intensity, with anything Lightning Bolt has ever done. Mind you, I love them both. And Psychic Paramount is more the prog side of implosive guitar/drums mayhem while LB is the scrappy punk rock side. I guess I just can't believe my ears with either band, and wonder what fickle mandate made one more attention-worthy than the other. Perhaps I'm just getting ahead of myself, as Psychic Paramount hasn't put together a full-length yet. Whatever the case, fans of mind-blowingly loud, careening rock ecstasy should get anything and everything available by Psychic Paramount. For those of you who feel you only need one of this sort of thing, you're dead wrong.

Now, on to this new Lightning Bolt. So far, reviewers are lamenting that Hypermagic Mountain shows stagnancy. That makes me laugh. Not really. Actually, that makes me feel confused. When I play this behemoth of a record, all of my relativistic critical bullshit goes bye-bye. All concerns over structure, consistency, variety, depth and even melody are lost to the blood-curdling passion coming out of the speakers. Unlike Oxes, Hella, or some such wankery, this wankery is insistently, urgently infectious. It holds fast to the ground, obliterating everything that stands in its way. I know, I know. That sounds like some inane soundbite cliché. This time it's true. Every goddamned thing on this record is boring into the earth's core, straight as a goddamned arrow. Another cliché. Yeah well, what this record does so well is clichéd. It's cheap and tawdry and godawful and mesmerizingly so. Logic and pasty critique pings off of the Hypermagic Mountain and shatters into a million pathetic molecular shitflecks.

The word "hypermagic" means Merlin in a full-bodied epileptic fit. But he could be dancing! He could also be dancing. Give him some more Ritalin.

Some Hypermagic moments:

1. Sharp knives emerge from my every pore, then I drop down from the rafters on a crowd of unsuspecting System of a Down fans.
2. It begins raining skulls on the baseball field during a key moment in the play-offs. Once the whole field is covered with skulls, more skulls fall and shatter off the bottom layer of skulls. This continues until Yankee Stadium is filled to the brim with skulls.
3. A pizza parlor grows legs and shits grease diarrhea all over the college dorms as it runs amuck in a college town near you!
4. Freddy Krueger is breakdancing at the square. During a complicated spin move, he falls face-first on his own glove. He pulls his face off and twirls it into the crowd like a pair of satin panties.
5. Anna Nicole Smith is eating spaghetti off of her cleavage with no hands while hanging upside down off of a tightrope walking tiger.

HYPERMAGIC! Catch some! Call it speed-blues, call it David Copafeel on ice. Call it Fantasia 20666. Call it ludicrous-speed booger flicking! I don't care. Just buy it already. Don't buy into nuthin. What am I, a politician? Am I an indie kid? What self-respecting human being allows himself to be called "indie?" How fucking atrocious would that be? I'm spouting off, but fuggit.

This is a great record, if it is a record. Me, I thought it was my own sweet sopping wet blood spattering in my ears for an hour.

1. 2 Morro Morro Land
2. Captain Caveman
3. Birdy
4. Riffwraith
5. Megaghost
6. Magic Mountain
7. Dead Cowboy
8. Bizarro Zarro Land
9. Mohawkwindmill
10. Bizarro Bike
11. Infinity Farm
12. No Rest For The Obsessed

Wonderful Rainbow
Load, 2003
rating: 5/5
reviewer: mr p


I want to be the third member of Lightning Bolt. In their early conception phase, Lightning Bolt was, in fact, a trio. However, ex-vocalist Hisham Bahroocha left to play drums in the equally phenomenal Black Dice before LB's first release, leaving Brian Gibson (bass) and Brian Chippendale (drums) to pick up the slack. But wouldn't it be easier if I just joined the band? Seriously, can the band really create abrasive, in-your-face, dissonant noise rock as a duo? It'd sound empty and hollow, right? Well, unfortunately for me, it doesn't. They've proven it before, and they've proven it again. Wonderful Rainbow, the band's third LP, is a cataclysmic catastrophe of epic proportions, meaning it's so full that it would throw up if any more were fed into its gaping mouth.

And yet the albums still sounds like sonic vomit. It's gross, ugly, and stinks of road kill. It celebrates the burgeoning under-underground, relying both on style and execution to make their voices heard. And my god is it beautiful. Probably the most successful stylistic element the band harbors is the way they play their instruments, which is extremely rough and outlandishly violent. Chippendale pounds on the drums as if he were trying to play louder than a 20-piece version of Acid Mothers Temple, while Gibson's thudding basslines sound like Les Claypool, Flea, and Mike Dirnt dry-humping one another on McCartney's love sofa. The result: unrequited love songs for the alienated rocker.

But Wonderful Rainbow is not all noise and cacophony. Underneath the distorted waves and discordant caterwauling are hummable melodies that forge new ways into your body. It's one of the most violent albums released in a long time, yet it's still palpable. There's something to hold on to, something you'll never want to let go. So forget about the My Morning Jacket and Songs: Ohia scene, the GY!BE and Out Hud scene; screw Interpol and Spoon, Neko Case and the New Pornographers. There's a brooding musical maelstrom just beneath the surface of "indie rock," and it's led by the likes of Lightning Bolt.

1. Hello Morning
2. Assassins
3. Dracula Mountain
4. 2 Towers
5. On Fire
6. Crown of Storms
7. Longstockings
8. Wonderful Rainbow
9. 30000 Monkies
10. Duel in the Deep