Lightning Bolt Album: "Hypermagic Mountain" Release Date:10/18/2005 Label:Load Records Rock-Rev Value: [7.5/10] Genre: Rock Styles: Experimental Rock, Post-Rock/ Experimental Buy It

Tracklist:

1 2 Morro Morro Land (3:43)
2 Captain Caveman (3:19)
3 Birdy (3:06)
4 Riffwraiths (3:03)
5 Mega Ghost (6:01)
6 Magic Mountain (4:55)
7 Dead Cowboy (7:58)
8 Bizarro Zarro Land (4:47)
9 Mohawk Windmill (9:38)
10 Bizarro Bike (5:18)
11 Infinity Farm (2:46)
12 For the Obsessed (2:10)

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review by:Allmusic
reviewer: Johnny Loftus
Album Value: (4.5/5)

Lightning Bolt's 2003 album Wonderful Rainbow just kept getting bigger and bigger, like a 16-ton amplifier falling out of the noon sky. Its bass tone squashed round heads into wrecked ellipses, and the drums chattered away as if on a chain drive. The album was the opposite of Excedrin, a tension headache in ten movements. Lightning Bolt have done it again with 2005's Hypermagic Mountain. It's hard to say this is accessible; besides, if you did say that, no one would hear it anyway. But bassist Brian Gibson and drummer/default vocalist Brian Chippendal build an addictive structure into the manic pulse of "Captain Caveman," and "Riffwraiths" -- musicians' biggest fear next to unreliable drummers -- sounds like a song's break extended to three explosive minutes. And while Chippendale's vocals on "Birdy" are a distracting non-factor, its rhythmic throb is more relentless than a carbon-arc strobe light with no off switch. None of this is melodic in the traditional sense; Wonderful Rainbow wasn't, either. But Lightning Bolt's music beckons from a more elemental place, as a ferocious distillation of shattered punk fury, dance music release, and the purposely weird. Closer "For the Obsessed" ends abruptly in mid-freak-out, giving the silence that follows its own electricity, and in "Bizarro Zarro Land" Gibson and Chippendale are heavy metal soloists fighting to the death. What makes Hypermagic even more heroic beyond its immediate rhythmic grip is the musicianship, the furious dedication to a hyper, jagged groove. Longer tracks like "Dead Cowboy" and "Mohawk Windmill" build into giant fractals of epic noise, with weird little filigrees stolen from old Yes albums bursting forth from roaring bass guitar and splattering drum rolls. At its most chaotic, Hypermagic Mountain could tear open a wormhole into Comets on Fire's Blue Cathedral. It's clear that Lightning Bolt reach stasis at their noisiest, when they're caught deep in the zone.

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review by:Pitchfork
reviewer: Brandon Stosuy, October 19, 2005
Album Value: (7.3/10)

For years, noise didn't make headlines-- or even show up in mainstream magazines in the first place. Yet, recently, the aesthetic has enjoyed a more jovial reception by the press and from indie rock fans-- thanks in large part to Wolf Eyes, Black Dice, and Lightning Bolt. This critical feedback has allowed noise bands to go on increasingly lengthier tours with larger audiences at each stop, and those higher-profile peers have fostered a larger, less incestuous noise community. For Lightning Bolt's Brian Gibson and Brian Chippendale, fortuitous cultural circumstances and their improvisational acumen have rendered them the toast of the current noise-rock crop-- all the while they've continued to tweak their post-hardcore/Harry Pussy formula.

Hypermagic Mountain is Lightning Bolt's fourth, most well-oiled album: song-by-song it chugs into rockier Van Halen, Fucking Champs, or Orthrelm territory. Somewhere in the middle a lack of variety creates a dull patch, but even the more homogenized tracks slip by on the upped energy as well as subtle, virtuostic additions to the violence. The set was again captured by ex-Small Factory jangle-popper Dave Auchenbach, who mostly harnesses the band live to two-track (with some live mixing) and DAT. Because of the approach, Hypermagic Mountain breathes like a battering ram: The drums are gargantuan and, conversely, the vocals fold nicely into the buzz.

The sound's crowded-- the Boschian cover art is a solid visual analogue-- but Lightning Bolt make room for all their key ingredients: brief space excursions, lessons in dynamics, monster riffs, semi-humorous politicos, sugar-dosed energy. Everything you'd expect to find is here and in amped form-- festering bass (with that slippery balloon sound) and machete-slinging, crazy-climber drums. The components establish LB as more rock, less noise-- though they've always treaded closer to that realm than to Merzbow or Whitehouse.

The Brians' break the gate with "2 Morro Morro Land", upchucking a noodle before opting for the overdrive of a jaunty lick. The heavier, somehow portentous "Captain Caveman" connects for a second punch with Chippendale shouting somewhere in the midst of the commotion that "this is the anthem." Well, actually, it's one of many.

The next movement's spacier, focusing on ghosts: "Riffwraiths" and "Mega Ghost" include more entropic loops and echoed vocals-- especially on "Mega", which begins ambiently with dead-soul vocal echo. Fittingly, the first few minutes of zoomed drums and bass on "Magic Mountain" sound like an uphill climb. Like the best of immediate-minded rockers, LB kindly deliver. So no, none of that avant-noise tease: Despite still working on the outer edge of rock dynamics, when LB build to something, you can be assured it'll explode.. (...)

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review by:Stylus
reviewer: Roque Strew
Album Value: [A-]

The myth of Lightning Bolt hangs on its devastating, shamanistic live act. Concertgoers encircle the band, in ritual awe, like a crowded halo of asteroids orbiting a binary star: a bassist butchering his rig like a pink-slipped surgeon, and a drummer grinding his ragtag kit into cinders, while belting yawp after yawp through a tattered pillowcase luchador mask into his “throat mike,” a jury-rigged phone receiver run through a pre-amp. The experience, religious to every ticket-holder, outruns language.

The problem of Lightning Bolt, by extension, is recapturing this unhinged tumult in the studio, readied for your iPod’s earbuds and your mom’s car stereo, without losing the myth in translation. Luckily, with each new release, the band has tapered the gap between the live act and the studio artifact. Culling 57 minutes of Dionysian fury from three weeks—and two tracks—of Apollonian sweat, Lightning Bolt rushes forward on Hypermagic Mountain, their fourth full-length, in another stride toward the perfection of their prog-noise esthetic.

Rewind to 2003, year eight of the Rhode Island dialectic—Brian Chippendale’s jackhammer drumming braided into Brian Gibson’s whitewater bass—when Wonderful Rainbow cemented the Ruins and Boredoms comparisons, when the band rocketed into the higher echelons of the indie hierarchy, when noise began to slowly invade the once signal-heavy hipster cosmology. The more mature Hypermagic Mountain manages to one-up its junior, coupling an across-the-board tightness with better mixing. Where the vocals worked before as accomplices in abstraction, they’re now turned up, and clearer, thanks to the band’s new setup. The drums and bass, in the egalitarian polish of Dave Auchenbach’s knob-twiddling, are now equally prominent in the mix. The production’s richer than ever, with the once-submarine low end reigning alongside the mids and highs.

Gibson’s bass lines gallop from the get-go, chased by Chippendale’s percussion stampede, promising on the first track, “2 Morro Morro Land,” that Hypermagic Mountain will loom monolithically, maybe taller than Wonderful Rainbow. The opener’s raucous verve is overshadowed by the threatening storm of the next track, “Captain Caveman.” Here Chippendale, on cue, takes center stage, almost crooning over the stop-start convulsions, proggy fits of ricochet chord progressions, cribbed St. Anger riffs, and Gatling bass-drum pummeling.(...)

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review by: Tinymixtapes
reviewer: willcoma
Album Value: (5/5)

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..(...)

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review by: shakingthrough
reviewer: Laurence Station
Album Value: (4.4/5)

Best way to enjoy music by Lightning Bolt: Crank and surrender. Hypermagic Mountain’s second track, “Captain Caveman,” all atomized vocal distortion and no-Ritalin-allowed rhythmic riffage, announces everything you need to know about the latest earsplitting noisefest from the high-revving bass and drum duo of Brian Gibson and Brian Chippendal. For those who thought 2003’s Wonderful Rainbow seemed extreme in its pulverizing level of intensity, Hypermagic Mountain reduces it to the equivalent of a by-the-numbers Bread rehearsal. Hypermagic Mountain’s sum effect eclipses its redline-obliterating parts, but special dispensations must be given to the leaking madness of “Megaghost,” with its yelping, wounded-animal sound effects and furiously tight interplay between guitar and drums. And it would be criminal to overlook the amazing proficiency exhibited on "Bizarro Zarro Land," which nimbly flirts with control and chaos, dexterously catapulting from one treacherous musical peak to next without once losing its footing. Hypermagic Mountain will be a tidal shock of relentless jackhammer threats to the non-discriminating music fan. For the initiated, there’s true primal joy to be heard in this mammoth creation. You’ve just got to be willing to shed those tightly guarded notions and listen.

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review by: Playlouder
reviewer: John Doran
Album Value: (4.5/5)

What blessed bastardry is this? It's bloody brilliant, that's what it is.

For the uninitiated (and surely there aren't that many left around these parts who haven't at least heard of this word-of-mouth sensation) Lightning Bolt are a duo of epic proportions. They came out of the Rhode Island, Providence performance art scene; Brian Chippendale played drums, Brian Gibson played bass; and when they got together, it was Mordor. After misfiring as a three piece, they went on to record 'Ride The Skies' and 'Wonderful Rainbow' as a duo but really became a cult name to drop because of their, literally, riotous live performances. Eschewing anything so sensible as playing on stage, they would set their instruments up on the floor instead. And with Chippendale yelling inaudible lyrics into a microphone stuffed into his mouth and his head crammed into a mask made from a pillow case as he bashed away at his kit and Gibson usually wearing a pixie hat, they would be the eye of calm in a psychedelic metal hurricane as bodies heaved and thrashed in a circle around them. The trouble was that it was always such an astounding experience to see them live that many would come away claiming that, as such, they just made noise and it'd be pointless to actually, you know, buy them on record.

The truth of the matter is that Lightning Bolt, although it is often hidden under sheets of feedback, hectic production and just sheer velocity, are actually a very hook heavy band. And here this is still the case. Gibson's bass is treated through layers and layers of FX, allowing him to carve out shimmering top end hooks as he thrashes out a groaning bottom end simultaneously. The over driven warmth of 'Dead Cowboy' is a flotilla of busy but simple hooks atop a sea of grinding sludge. And 'Bizarroland' starts off almost like Steve Vai before doing a hand break turn straight into becoming some sort of unholy alliance between High On Fire and Ornette Coleman.
(...)

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