special introductory
paragraph!
Lightning Bolt
Conan 7"
Ride The Skies
Wonderful Rainbow
Hypermagic Mountain
Earthly Delights
Lightning Bolt is a duo from Providence, Rhode Island featuring Brian Gibson on bass guitar and Brian Chippendale on drums and vocals. But before you formulate an idea of how boring such a duo must sound, let me add that Gibson tunes his bass like a cello, replaces his high A with a banjo string, and runs the instrument through pitch shifter, octave, distortion, bass distortion, delay and wah-wah pedals until it sounds almost nothing like a bass guitar (hence not one but TWO All-Music Guide reviewers mistaking it for a lead guitar). Let me further add that Chippendale fills every square second of space with technically insane drum-smashing racket while sing/speaking occasional vocals into a telephone receiver microphone pumped through distortion effects. Noisy? CHRIST YES, NOISY! Good? Sure.
Say, you're buddies with "Weird Al" Yankovic. Could you pass along this hilarious Jay-Z song parody I made up today? It's called "In Brooklyn We Goat Herd - We Goat Herd" and it's about a group of goat herders NO DON'T GO AWA
Illiteracy fans should get a kick out of the spraypainted graffiti my wife and I ran across on 96th Street this morning (at 2:00 PM when we finally got up): "Vote Oboma 2008." As my wife commented, "I tried writing him in, but apparently the world just wasn't ready for 'Oboma'."
Lightning Bolt is the kind of album you get when you decide to record an album before you actually have enough songs to record an album. It consists of:
A) An epic journey into the higher pitches and outer reaches of noise rock
"Into The Valley" is one of the most sonically intriguing opening tracks in the history of recording: 11 minutes of non-stop drum bashing and chimey high-speed note sequences that sound more like a Silver Applesy homemade instrument than any bass guitar ever heard. Unfortunately, the rest of the record not only fails to live up to the promise of this opening track; it doesn't even try. Admittedly, "Murk Hike" works, in spite of its compositional laziness. Gibson slowly develops a hilarious yet 'song-esque' hook by alternating four impossibly high (feedback? harmonic?) notes with one low one -- then almost instantly THROWS IT AWAY! Still, the song's disturbing frequency levels cause a pulsating hum to vibrate in the listener's lower spine, which many doctors agree is an extraordinarily bad idea.
The rest feels like leftovers, and probably is. "Caught Deep In The Zone" is just a three-minute hiss snippet pulled directly from the so-called 'Bonus Material,' "Fleeing The Valley of Whirling Knives" begins as a grinding metal spectacular before tragically degenerating into three happy notes played over and over for six tedious minutes, and "Mistake" is simply the aforementioned happy boring note segment slowed down.
Obviously every band has to start somewhere, and few bands ever come up with a song as unique as "Into The Valley." Still, the rest of the album not only pales in comparison, but actually at times feels like a calculated rip-off. Still, there's 20 minutes of groundbreaking music here, and that's definitely worth a 6 in the view of MY ears!
Hi, I'm some guy's big ol' smelly ass! BRRRRAAAPPPPPPP!!!!!!
Okay, things are off to a great start so let's keep this momentum going.
Knock knock!
"War On Terror"!? Yeah, more like my chintzy t-shirt "TORE ON WEARER!"
But enough happiness. You've been reading the latest news, right? About how my ex-boss neglected to pay me several paychecks so I signed up for unemployment due to "Lack of Work," and am now speaking to a lawyer about how to get the money she owes me? Well, today I met with another woman who used to work at my company, and learned that when she left, my ex-boss owed her $12,000!!! Never paid her a CENT of it! But wait, there's more. Then I came home today to find a letter in my mailbox from the Department of Labor. It seems that my ex-boss called them to tell them that I QUIT!!! So now I have to argue my case to the Department of Labor, who will hopefully understand that there's a difference between "quitting" and "giving your boss six months to pay you the money she owes you, and having her not only fail to do so but inform you that she doesn't know when or if you'll ever be paid." I'll keep you postered.
This Lightning Bolt 7" stinks so bad, I'm not going to devote more than one sentence to it. Here comes the sentence, so prepare to read it slowly and take it all in:
The first two songs are terrible live recordings of a simplistic, hard-to-hear throwaway called "Conan" and a dumb, ugly waste of sound waves called "Behemoth"; the third is an early demo of Ride The Skies' "Into The Mist 2," cleverly entitled "Into The Mist."
Oh heck, after expanding all that effort, I received this note from a MySpace Friend:
"mark just letting you know, the copy of 'conan' that circulates around the internet has noise reduction on it that makes it sound like shit. so your dissatisfaction probably lies in the fact that you don't own an original copy and have heard a poor reproduction of the sound."
Okay, I'll admit that perhaps the song "Conan" would be improved by better sound, but "Behemoth" out and out SUCKS and "Into The Mist" isn't even a song. There - you made me exert a whole second sentence worth of energy! I HOPE YOU'RE HAPPY!
So I'm swimming in this pool and I see a sign that says "Welcome to our OOL. Notice there's no P in it." So I says to myself, "Well then, I'll just drop in a little 'ST'" and the next thing you kn
Here's a joke about John Travolta's retarded son dying. Okay, what do you get when you cross Jett 'Tard' Tr
TITS ARE BOUNCY! BOINGY BOINGY BOINGY B
I think we can all agree that none of the three examples cited above are appropriate ways to begin a record review. Therefore, I'd like to propose the following:
A) Somebody write an opening paragraph about how Ride The Skies is a jubilantly insane "experimental math-metal" record crammed to the jib with crazyass sounds, non-stop rollicking drums, and some of the fastest note runs and finger-taps the world has ever applied to the neck of a bass guitar.
D) Somebody write a paragraph about how astonishingly tight and intertwined the two musicians are, collaborating on neckjerk rhythmic swerves and whiplash time changes as if somebody glued their bodies together as a Novelty Siamese Twin.
E) Somebody find out what happened to B) and C). I've had it with you bananas in the Monkey Gallery.
The best kind of album is one that sounds unlike any other in your collection. If you own one indie rock album, you're covered. All the others are identical. Ditto for the entire genre of World Music. But Lighting Blot herein offers your mind something it has never before experienced: a completely unique and distinctive sound that drives normally talented record reviewers to use words like "swizzling" and "super-wiggly-wiggled" in their song descriptions.
Here, just look at the incompetence of the English language in describing these songs. I found these descriptions on various web sites you can find around the Internet:
-- "Forcefield" - Swizzling crazy notes! Slippy-slidey and BAM-BAM-BAM drumline! Herky jerk bow sludge distorted!
Yes, it's astounding just how poor a job some people do of describing these songs. Somebody should do something, or send a letter.
This album is Lightning Bolt trying. They have enough songs written, they have unfathomably fierce (and fast!) instrumental skills, and their compositions are both mentally challenging and sonically creative without ever degenerating into inaccessible noise for the sake of noise's sake of noise. The vocals are mostly just sounds instead of lyrics, adding yet another unrecognizable tone to the brew of festering blow-out-your-eardrums BOOMs, DOODLY-DOODLYs, FRASSSHHHHes and RATATATTATTATPATISHes. In "The Faire Folk," for example, he makes little whiny noises that sound like a puppy crying! In "Wee Ones Parade," he yells to mark the high notes! And I must've listened to "Ride The Sky" three times before I realized, "Wait a second! That hissy whirring noise is the SINGER!? What a wonderful asshole!"
I think we can all agree that a heterosexual man shouldn't be throwing around the descriptor 'what a wonderful asshole!' all willy-nilly like he owns the place, so I'm going to move on to a separate and distinct topic now. This topic is the economic rebeccsion.
Many people are suffering due to the corrupt acts of a few greedy, worthless piece of shit individuals in the financial sector, so I'd like to offer you 10 tips for saving money during this difficult economic climate.
1. Set A Target - Shoot three to six people in order to make their expenses available for unforeseen emergencies.
2. Make Your Money Work As Hard As You Do - Tell the dollars in your wallet to get a job or TAKE A HIKE, YOU PRICKS!!! Then mail them to me for discipline.
3. Slim Down Your Checking - I'm already getting sick of this.
4. Put Savings On AutoPilot - They'll fly the plane blah blah ah the hell with it
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I think we can all agree that was a fantastic ending.
This record finds the Bolt thrower'n its hat into the ring of AmRep noise-metal-rock. As a gigantic fan of AmRep noise-metal-rock, I have no qualms with this stylistic change. Yes, I preferred the insane weirdo approach of Ride The Skies because it was more innovative, but hey I'll take fuzzed-out heavy bass lines over puss-ass emo any day of the world so count me in!
Unfortunately, they also for some reason get hooked on this idea that it's somehow compelling to play a very simple riff 500 hundred times in a row with no changes. This results in such frustrating, tiresome songs as "Assassins" (the Germs' "We Must Bleed" in reverse for nearly four minutes), "Crown Of Storms" (which starts as a killer hammer-on assault before turning into an endless series of slow happy notes for the last three minutes), "2 Towers" (Between 1:26 and 4:48, Gibson plays two notes. Over and over and OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND FUCKING OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER UNTIL YOU WANT TO RIP THE FUCKING THING OUT OF THE STEREO AND SLICE YOUR THROAT OPEN WITH IT!!!!!) and the complete throwaway "Duel In The Deep" (six minutes of tuneless racket). Again, I love heavy noise-rock -- and Gibson has about the greatest bass tone you're ever going to hear -- but what exactly am I supposed to get out of hearing the same boring part repeated 500 times in a row? Is it meant to be hypnotic? Pummelling? Cathartic? It just sounds lazy. And believe me, I know lazy! Because I'm lazy.
There are still several difficult and synapse-blowing passages on the disc; they're just farrer and fewer between. For one, super-stadium rocker "On Fire" sounds like mid-'70s Rush experiencing a manic episode, debilitating depression and electro-shock treatment all within a whirlwind five minutes. Likewise, "30,000 Monkies" blasts two channels of deliriously fast finger-tapping into your ear over a cacophony of percussive mental instability. And "Longstockings" defies all expectation by being a gentle pop song! Not that I'd ever want Lightning Bolt to do ANOTHER gentle pop song, but it's neat to hear them try it once and succeed so lovelyly.
To be fair, even most of the repetitive songs feature at least one segment demonstrating impressive instrumental interplay. But this is part of why it's so depressing when they (for example) cut short a lovely hammer-on melody in order to play two fucking notes OVER AND OVER AND OVER AGAIN in "2 Towers." Maybe this passage kicks some ass in a live'n'loud concert setting, but it'd might as well be some guy's dick resting on my stereo for all the enjoyment I get out of hearing it at home.
Wonderful Rainbow is a good noise-rock album, absolutely. It's just not edited very concisely.
"Duel In The Deep" for example should've been edited clear off the record.
Rest in peace, Mr. Ron Asheton. You gave us three great Stooges albums
and The Weirdness, as well as records I've never heard by The New
Order, Destroy All Monsters, New Race, Dark Carnival, Empty Set and The
Powertrane. We shared a birthday, though you were 25 years ahead. I
was alerted to your passing by a classic rock radio DJ, who followed up
her sad announcement by playing Billy Joel's "Piano Man," as if to say,
"Sing us a song, Ron Asheton. You're the Piano Man." And though you
were actually a guitarist, I'm sure that you would've sang us a song and
played the piano if the situation demanded that you do so. So thank you
for the wonderful Stooges albums (except for The Weirdness) and
don't feel bad that Iggy Pop outlived you. He outlives everybody. He
and Keith Richards will probably have to stage a fight to the death in
2348 just to get one of them the hell off the planet.
On that note, let's turn to Lightning Bolt's career-defining
tour-de-force, Hypermagic Mountain. This three-sided LP (and
one-sided CD) sums up the band's entire worldview, almost serving as a
(better) reprise of the last three records. The heavy chord-driven
AmRep noise-rock of Wonderful Rainbow is revisited in the much
meaner and catchier "Captain Caveman," "Birdy" and "Riff Wraiths"; the
jaw-ripping-off technical fury and/or sick hammer-on attacks of Ride
The Skies say 'howdy-do!' in "Mega Ghost," "Dead Cowboy" and
"Bizarro Zarro Land"; the improvisational non-actual-song approach of
Lightning Bolt heads its ugly rear in the gobstopping solo
assault "BizarroBike" (which sounds like "Eruption" with a second Eddie
Van Halen on drums), mesmerizing and goofy studio snippet
"Infinity Farm" and goddamned near pointless "No Rest For The Obsessed"
(which at two minutes isn't quite long enough to make me reconsider the
"10"-rating); and the unorthodox songwriting of all three can be
cherished in the celebratory herky-jerk slide-arounder "2Morro Morro
Land," endlessly climbing "Magic Mountain" and slow melancholy
guitar/speedy furious drum dichotomy "Mohawk Windmill."
Everything you could possibly want in a Lightning Bolt record is here,
and their compositional and playing skills are stronger than ever. If
you have any interest in hearing what a Prog-Noise-Metal-Psych-Punk-Jazz
band might sound like, Hypermagic Mountain should be in your
Amazon.com shopping cart ASAP (see below for link - USE IT). Everything
is unbelievably loud -- even the vocals, which actually include
English words this time. As it turns out, Mr. Drummerman has a
high whiny spazcore voice; thankfully he still distorts it all to hell
so it sounds good. He even throws in some strong vocal hooks, including
one that converts the otherwise repetitive punker "Birdy" into a
darn-near singalong!
Other points I'd like to note include:
A. "Captain Caveman" is about Ted Kaczynski!
Say, I know a lot of you young people have trouble communicating with
members of the fairer sex, so I'd like to offer a few conversational
tips. Memorize these and you'll quickly become the most popular and
beloved man in your school district:
She: "Hi! What's your name?"
She: "Can I hold your hand?"
She: "What kind of music do you like?"
She: "Wanna have sex?"
this is how you would have made it a near-perfect album:
Infinity Farm
Magic Mountain
so the way it is released I hereby "award it" a 6/10 cause of my
short attention span. with my alterations that goes up to a 9/10
Anyway, if I was Mark Prindle, I would give Ride the Skies the ten. To
me, it's their most creative album. It has lots of really cool (bass)
guitar noises, and it doesn't descend into low-end thumping
boring-riffed monotony as much as the last two. You know that the
consensus seems to be that Wonderful Rainbow is their best album? That
is baffling to me. There's only so much THRUMTHRUMTHRUMTHRUMTHRUM I
can listen to before I decide to put on something else.
Have you checked Zu out? Their new album just came out on Ipecac (you can download it from this blog:http://experimentaletc.blogspot.com/2009/01/zu.html . The blog also has all sorts of cool stuff in it, including some interesting albums from 2008 you might wanna check out). This new Zu album is amazing, sounds a little like Rutmanis-era Melvins but speeded up and with no vocals. It actually has special appearances by Mike Patton and King Buzzo, and though it just got released now I'm pretty sure it will be one of the ten best albums this year!
Thanks again for reviewing Lightning Bolt and keep up the good work!
WHAT'S THAT??? I'M AFRAID I CAN'T MAKE OUT WHAT YOU'RE SAYING BECAUSE MY EARS HAVE EXPLODED AFTER LISTENING TO THE OVER-DISTORTED SPEAKER-SHATTERING HEAD-BLASTING NEW LIGHTNING BOLT ALBUM! THAT'S RIGHT, I'VE GONE COMPLETELY DEAF AND CAN'T HEAR A THING! AS SUCH, FEEL FREE TO PLAY A MODEST MOUSE ALBUM.
Lightning Bolt Of Love is back in America with their latest and not greatest but certainly good record Earthly Delights, a sonic acid bath that drives home two important messages:
1. Music sounds awesome when everything's loud, grinding and echoing all over the place.
2. Music gets really boring when you play two chords over and over for 5 hours like an asshole.
This time out, the Bolt is wallowing in blastingly loud fuzzed-out chord sequences often wrapped up in so much delay/echo that you feel like you're whirling through space in an LSD rocket. The instruments again sound raw, blistering and incredible, with Gibson finding even more sick bass tones to manipulate as Chippendale smashes the dick out of his drumset.
So come on ladies and smash some dick at Chippendale's.
A further plus is that the songs, as relentlessly intense and volume-riffic as they are, cover a nice bit of variety ground. "Sound Guardian" and "Nation Of Bear" kick off the record with sci-fi noise rock so pissed off and insane that they make Helios Creed sound perfectly grounded, then everything goes kooky as they complement their pounding anger noise with simmering blues-rock, Caribbean-rhythmed fun rock, improvisational psych-noise, ethereal prettiness, and even something you might call 'AmRep country-western' (in an adorable Black-Crowes-meets-Helmet hoedown called "Funny Farm"). So take it from me, if it's songs you're after, you'll get no argument from me!
Unfortunately, too many of the songs refuse to SHUT THE GODDAMN UP and insist on dragging on and on and on and on, repeating the same two or three chords over and over until your beard is six feet long and you're dead. Echo nightmare "Sound Guardian," high-pitched dickaround "Flooded Chamber" and Nomeansno blooze-thumper "Colossus" are all twice as long as necessary (especially "Colossus," which deteriorates into a two-chord pile of crap halfway through), but the worst offender is album-closer "Transmissionary," a basic chord pounder that goes from Nowheresville to Nothing County and takes TWELVE AND A HALF MINUTES to do it. The towns are only about two miles away from each other, so you see my point.
Agh! (*returns penis to safety position inside Underoo*)
Regardless of my impatience with their redundancy, I sincerely love Lightning Bolt and I hope they continue breaking the sound barrier for generations to come. Look, here's my impression of them: BAH NAH NAH NAH! BAH NAH NAH NAH! BAH NAH NAH NAH! BAH NAH NAH NAH! WAFF WAFF WAFF!!! WAFF WAFF WAFF!!! PISH PISH PADUMPADUMPADUMPA! PISH PISH PADUMPADUMPADUMPA!
Ha! Foiled you again! That was actually my impression of an irritating dog being hurled off a boat.
As for the other songs, I thought Flooded Chamber was pretty gonowhere at first, but it's a Real Song that builds and adds elements throughout its course! Not to mention it's like nothing the band has ever done; also The Sublime Freak's production is flat-out awesome and fun. In fact, if I had to choose the two weakest songs, they would be Sound Guardians and Nation of Boar. Really! They're great songs, but they don't show the musical diversity and daring of the rest of the tracks. I mean, come on. Funny Farm is a fucking POP song, practically.
But I will agree with you that Colossus is probably twice as long as it needs to be.
B) A seemingly improvisational yet exceptional exploration of the high ping/low boom frequencies made possible by Gibson's bass set-up
C) A worthless shit piece of crap garbage noise unlistenable godawful pile of shut up you assholes
D) A swoopy slidey heavy metal slammer that turns into a boring repetitive happy song halfway through
E) The boring latter half of D slowed way way down and hiked way way loud
F) 47 minutes of inaudibly hissy, feedback-drenched 'bonus material' whose inclusion would lower my number rating to a low 5 so let's pretend it's not actually here.
on this album the only songs I care for are into the valley, fleeing
the valley of whrling knives, and "mistake", the rest doesn't do it
for me. And I like that faggy boredoms noise shit pile shit. 4/10
Who's there?
A wreath!
A wreath who?
A wreath of Franklin's respect! (Aretha Franklin's "Respect"!)
-- "Saint Jacques" - One pounding low note over and over! Then it stops for a wiggly noise. Then he starts sticking REALLY tiny high notes between the low notes! (One part is "Frere Jacques"!) (Hence the title!)
-- "13 Monsters" - 45-second drum intro! Distorted motorcycle rock riff! Quickly collapses into detuned fuzz growl buzzsaw noise of destruction!
-- "Ride The Sky" - Intrigue! Spy Music! Espionage! (On poisonous drugs!) Finger-tapping! Percussionist hits drum 1,999,999,999,999 times per minute!
-- "The Faire Folk" - Pleasant, airy yet fast-as-holy-hell-shit finger-tap melody! With no distortion!
-- "Into The Mist 2" - Super-wiggly-wiggled notes! Delightful four-stomp breaks!
-- "Wee Ones Parade" - They perform "Dueling Banjos" with their mouths like idiots! Then Ratatata POUND! POUND! Ratatata POUND! POUND! Ridiculous rooster bass pecking noise! Tremelo-vibrating heavy mass shakes your den!
-- "Rotator" - Dissonance and ugle! Ugly ugly ugle! So high! Wait! Is that FEEDBACK pumped through some effect!?
I like this one quite a bit even though its a lil repetitive 8/10
This is probably my favourite out of the LPs released so far by these guys; 'Two Towers' (the aforementioned 'two notes' song) is BRILLIANT in the middle; I suppose it's meant to be hypnotic, after lots of really short bursts of squallling noise and chaos, it just sits into a really great thrash groove - whilst the drums sound all of the changes rather than the melodic instrument. 'On Fire' is my single favourite tune of theirs; that one is pretty diverse and prone to changing as opposed to sticking to one riff. From me it gets an 8, which is bumped up to a ten for when these songs get played live.
This is my favorite of their releases and the only one I listen to. My
problem with them is that I only need to hear about 10 minutes and I
have my fill of this type of music for a month. "Dracula Mountain"
totally kick ass though.
its really good mang, and repetition can work just fine, you just have
to get lost in this stuff and it's gold 9/10
I used to hate 2 Towers too, but now I think it's the best song on
here. I agree with Dan above -- the middle part is brilliant and
hypnotic. I'm actually tired of most of the other songs, but that one
is still amazing when played loud enough. Actually, all of their
stuff gets better the louder it is played (and this definitely isn't
true of all music).
B. "Dead Cowboy" is about murdering George Bush!
C. That squiggly fast dumb high riff in "Dead Cowboy" is Lightning
Bolt's impression of Hoedown music!
D. "Mega Ghost" at first appears to be a ripoff of The Meatmen's "I Sin
For A Living," but soon reveals itself as a brilliantly tense and
churning industrial machine of a song!
E. This band rules more ass than an Ass Ruler that you use to measure
the length of your ass! (Don't cheat and start at the colon.)
You: "Me Fuckin You! I'm Korean."
You: "Sure! Grab onto this big veiny finger with the balls dangling
underneath it."
You: "Unshaven but not too hirsute. You see, I thought you said
'pubic'! Ha ha! You and I are laughing together!"
You: "No, I'm gay. Call Mark Prindle, unless you're fat."
If anything, this is the one for me that is a bit repetitious. I do enjoy it a lot, but it's a lot to take in one sitting.
Your review threw me when you said Ron Asheton was in New Order. But
then I discovered it wasn't THAT "New Order".
yes, almost a masterpiece.
this album is AMAZING (in theory)...but it is too fucking long.
obviously a bunch of standouts on here, dead cowboy is near perfect
blah blah blah. the problem is some tracks don't go anywhere. birdy is
too long. riffwraith is boring as fuck.
2 Morro Morro Land
Dead Cowboy
Birdy
Bizzarro Bike
Bizzarro Zarro Land
Captain Caveman
No Rest 4 The Obsessed
Lightning Bolt are quite the band. Neve really heard anything like em. Though at the same time I haven't really felt the need to listen to them ever since I discovered their music. These reviews might bring back my interest, though! Only LB album I have is Wonderful Rainbow, but if Hypermagic Mountain is indeed better, then I may as well give that one a go.
Great band! Thanks for reminding me that I need the first Lightning
Bolt album. You basically make it sound like it's just two dudes
dicking around, but honestly, I love albums that sound like two dudes
dicking around. Like those first three Ween albums that I like a lot!
And those two No Age albums I like a lot! And that one Mouthus album
that I listened to once and thought was pretty cool! And those shitty
Japanther albums that are shitty! And those Happy Flowers albums that
I'd probably love if I could ever manage to find them!
So I got this album based on your enthusiastic review and I gotta say: I'm disappointed. There's just not enough going on. While tuning your bass like a cello, putting a banjo string on and distorting it sounds like a cool idea on paper, on record it just sounds kind of gimmicky. All of this is worsened by the lack of memorable songwriting. Sure there are some cool riffs here and there, but like I said before, there's just not enough going on. When I listen to the bass parts I think to myself "Oh. Now he's playing a low fast riff. Oh. Now he's playing a high melodic riff. Oh. Now's he's playing a low fast riff again. Oh. Now he's etc." The drum part reads something like this "Oh. Now he's bashing away on the cymbals. Oh. Now he's playing a slow, sparse fill for dramatic effect. Oh. Now he's basing away on the cymbals again. Oh. Now he's etc." That's the entire album right there. There really is not much more to it than that. Maybe they're better live, I don't know. But what I do know is that if you like this you should really give Aenima another listen, and I'm not even being sarcastic. It sounds a lot like this but with arrangements and songs that are much further developed and thought-out than these. I'm not a huge Tool fan myself (although I used to be) but this makes Aenima sound like The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway.
Thanks once again for a great recommendation! Today has been probably the best day for me for finding cool bands I hadn't heard before in at least a year, and Lightning Bolt was great to top it off. All the albums are really amazing, I just love this sort of hectic tight crazyness. I gotta see these guys live sometime.
ARGH can't you see the newest Lightning Bolt album is the best one since Ride the Skies? I know you may or may not like chords that repeat ad infinitum but you've got to really pay attention to the music and let it sink into you. Yeah it sounds like the same thing over and over but you have to pick out subtle details and the "feel" of the music. Whatever the hell that means! I don't see why you would complain about a twelve-minute song that actually goes somewhere and is interesting and great when you gave Hypermagic Mountain and its 9-minute slab of sonic shit Mohawk Windmill ten stars. IN MY OPINION, Earthly Delights should have nine stars and HM a seven. But that's just me! I would give Ride the Skies a Ten. Transmissionary is the best song Lightning Bolt has ever done! Really! Maybe because I'm used to listen to long droney music but in my opinion the song has enough variety and goes enough places to be interesting.
Click here to light up your stereo with some cheap, filling Lightning Bolt CDs!
Or enjoy the "Thunder"-ous record reviews of MarkPrindle.comin' at ya!
