Lightning Bolt | ||
| Allmusic Biography : Lightning Bolt emerged from Providence, Rhode Island in 1995 as a three-piece art school project. Initially there was Brian Chippendales explosive, nonstop drumming, Brian Gibsons Contortions-like basslines, and Hisham Baroochas vocals propelling them in a fury of volatile noise and orgiastic tribalism. The group helped found Fort Thunder, a music and art collective, and recorded a self-titled album that was issued through Load in 1999. By 2001s Ride the Skies, Baroocha had departed (he eventually formed Black Dice). This left the vocal duties to Chippendale, who jammed the microphone into his mouth as he drummed. Lightning Bolt did a series of tours with bands like the Locust, Arab on Radar, Orchid, and Melt Banana, some of which were the focus of band documentary The Power of Salad, a 2003 film directed by Peter Glantz and Nick Noe. Their next studio album came in the form of Wonderful Rainbow, an album that embraced a more demented approach to traditional rock forms. The album did very well in underground music circles, and set up the release of 2005s Hypermagic Mountain. The band toured frequently, but didnt return to the studio until 2009s Earthly Delights, which was followed in 2012 by mini-album Oblivion Hunter, comprised mainly of archival recordings unearthed and cleaned up for release. Though they were still touring sporadically, both Gibson and Chippendale kept busy with various other projects, ranging from Gibsons involvement with doom metal band Megasus to Chippendales growing art career and prolific solo project Black Pus. Lightning Bolt returned in 2015 with sixth album Fantasy Empire, their first new material in over five years and also their first recorded in a fully functional high-end recording studio. | ||
 | Album: 1 of 10 Title: Lightning Bolt Released: 1999 Tracks: 5 Duration: 31:46 Scroll: Up Down Top Bottom 25% 50% 75% Spotify Allmusic Wikipedia AlbumCover | 1 Into the Valley (10:46) 2 Murk Hike (03:04) 3 Caught Deep in the Zone (03:13) 4 Fleeing the Valley of Whirling Knives (10:37) 5 Mistake (04:04) |
| Lightning Bolt : Allmusic album Review : Recorded after the departure of Bharoocha, Lightning Bolts first album shows that the duos frenetic broken-machine-played-by-live-instruments approach was not merely in place from the start but firing on all fours. Its not easy to describe the tracks -- its one thing to say its just bass; drums; and gargled, barely audible but still shouted vocals; quite another to describe the effect of the performances. At the bands fastest, like "Into the Valley" and the latter half of "Fleeing the Valley of Whirling Knives," everything sounds like the most tightly wound wire or rubber band getting even more and more tightly wound as it goes, to the point where all the activity almost becomes the most unlikely form of ambient music ever heard. The two dont simply repeat the same thing over and over again -- theres variety, especially in Gibsons bass work, keeping the same propulsion but subtly shifting notes as it goes, a sine wave of sound. Chippendale, meanwhile, is just amazing, just going all over the place on the drums but very clearly playing them instead of bashing as quickly as human musculature will allow. When the slower moments surface, such as the martial "Murk Hike" and the lowrider funk in hell that starts "Fleeing the Valley of Whirling Knives," the sheer volume level remains, which makes the inevitable explosions elsewhere all the more amazing. The various prog comparisons have a certain sense here, but theres no showoff wank, more an active and conscious harnessing of energy for very specific purposes. Classic moment -- whoever in the world is speaking at the live snippet starting "Caught Deep in the Zone" saying, in a most unusual accent, that the "alternative charts" are "just like the other side, only a bit stranger." Later CD versions included two bonus track curios: the tempo-shifting half-hour mayhem of "Zone," which, among other things, practices a variety of tape abuse on said spoken word snippet, and "And Beyond," a ten-minute, high-velocity piece, complete with apparent hip-hop audio-vérité skit. | ||
 | Album: 2 of 10 Title: Ride the Skies Released: 2001-02-11 Tracks: 8 Duration: 35:37 Scroll: Up Down Top Bottom 25% 50% 75% Spotify Allmusic Wikipedia AlbumCover | 1 Forcefield (04:01) 2 Saint Jacques (04:13) 3 13 Monsters (02:48) 4 Ride the Sky (04:27) 5 The Faire Folk (06:16) 6 Into the Mist 2 (03:21) 7 Wee Ones Parade (05:18) 8 Rotator (05:08) |
| Ride the Skies : Allmusic album Review : When you break it down to the nitty-gritty, 99% of musicians who compose their own material are trying to do one of two things. The majority attempt to form songs, and of course there are a million different theories about what makes a good song, in terms on length, structure, aesthetic considerations, and so on. There are others, however, who have no real ambition to write songs in the traditional sense. Their goals are better described by the two-word term "sound bombardment." Artists who strive for this noble aim attempt to concoct original combinations of noise bursts to stimulate an audience in such a way that they will reconsider the way they look at music. The aptly named Lightning Bolt, a drums/bass duo from Providence, RI, falls into the latter category. Ride the Skies is a rhythmic explosion of distorted guitar solos and hurried drums. Most tracks give off the effect of a drivers education student stepping on the accelerator and brake at the same time. Start, burst, stop. Repeat. Its explosive, heavy, exciting, and rushed, and then it all stops. And starts again. Patterns are made and then immediately broken. A hard nut to crack, but an original listening experience. For open-minded listeners only. | ||
 | Album: 3 of 10 Title: Wonderful Rainbow Released: 2003-03-04 Tracks: 10 Duration: 41:44 Scroll: Up Down Top Bottom 25% 50% 75% Spotify Allmusic Wikipedia AlbumCover | 1 Hello Morning (00:55) 2 Assassins (03:43) 3 Dracula Mountain (05:11) 4 2 Towers (07:08) 5 On Fire (04:42) 6 Crown of Storms (05:09) 7 Longstockings (03:17) 8 Wonderful Rainbow (01:29) 9 30,000 Monkies (03:49) 10 Duel in the Deep (06:16) |
| Wonderful Rainbow : Allmusic album Review : In case its unique brand of sonic assault and battery didnt leave you lying dead on the floor with your spleen poking halfway out your gaping mouth the first time around, Lightning Bolt is back for a second strafing run on your sense of mental and musical balance. Think youre up for it? Well, maybe you are, but only if you leave your volume knob down between two and three. Its hard to believe that all this noise is made by only a guitarist and a drummer, and its sometimes even harder to believe that no electronic manipulation is involved. But however it is that they create this glorious ruckus, its a sound that attracts at least as strongly as it repels, and there are a few tracks (lets not call them "songs," thank you) on Wonderful Rainbow that come perilously close to actually having hooks. The brilliant "Dracula Mountain," for example, with its heavily processed and thoroughly indecipherable vocals, or the equally baffling and wonderful "Assassins," both of which pummel and dance in equal measure. In fact, the only real misstep here is "Duel in the Deep," which clocks in at an eventually tedious six minutes. At its best, though, this album is like having a beautiful girl hit you repeatedly over the head with a baseball bat. Imagine all the best aspects of Fred Frith, Derek Bailey, the Ruins, Slayer, and Ornette Coleman all thrown into a blender together. Then imagine them on speed. This ones a keeper. | ||
 | Album: 4 of 10 Title: Hypermagic Mountain Released: 2005-10-18 Tracks: 12 Duration: 56:45 Scroll: Up Down Top Bottom 25% 50% 75% Spotify Allmusic Wikipedia AlbumCover | 1 2 Morro Morro Land (03:41) 2 Captain Caveman (03:19) 3 Birdy (03:06) 4 Riff Wraiths (03:01) 5 Mega Ghost (06:01) 6 Magic Mountain (04:55) 7 Dead Cowboy (07:58) 8 Bizarro Zarro Land (04:47) 1 Mohawk Windmill (09:38) 2 Bizarro Bike (05:18) 3 Infinity Farm (02:46) 4 No Rest for the Obsessed (02:10) |
| Hypermagic Mountain : Allmusic album Review : Lightning Bolts 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 2005s Hypermagic Mountain. Its 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 songs break extended to three explosive minutes. And while Chippendales 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 wasnt, either. But Lightning Bolts 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 Fires Blue Cathedral. Its clear that Lightning Bolt reach stasis at their noisiest, when theyre caught deep in the zone. | ||
 | Album: 5 of 10 Title: Earthly Delights Released: 2009-10-12 Tracks: 9 Duration: 50:58 Scroll: Up Down Top Bottom 25% 50% 75% Spotify Allmusic Wikipedia AlbumCover | 1 Sound Guardians (04:52) 2 Nation of Boar (06:09) 3 Colossus (07:14) 4 The Sublime Freak (04:26) 5 Flooded Chamber (04:21) 6 Funny Farm (05:39) 1 Rain on Lake Im Swimming In (02:13) 2 S.O.S. (03:40) 3 Transmissionary (12:20) |
| Earthly Delights : Allmusic album Review : After a four-year hiatus and a few bailed attempts at recording a proper follow-up to Hypermagic Mountain, Lightning Bolt returns in full force. Here, on Earthly Delights, the thunderous Rhode Island duo’s riffs are explosive and punishing as ever, as drummer/garbled vocalist Brian Chippendale and bassist Brian Gibson do what they do best: play incredibly loud and incredibly hard. Their technical proficiency and kinetic energy is still dizzying, and as always, their style is entirely their own. Call it metal, call it post-rock, or call it intolerable noise, there still isn’t any other band that quite compares to the glory of Lightning Bolt. Earthly Delights isn’t a huge departure from Wonderful Rainbow or Hyper Magic Mountain, but even so, this is forgivable when Gibson and Chippendales music is so unique to begin with. Most of the album is made up of the classic “Crown of Storms” and “Assassins” types of pummeling thunder -- songs specifically made for popping the eardrums of any parking lot attendants within a 50-yard radius. “S.O.S.” and “Transmissionary” fit into this category. Elsewhere, "Sublime Freak" is a furious endurance test, built on a hyper-tribal rhythmic repetition set to an acid-house tempo, the exasperating psychedelic insanity of “Flooded Chamber” weeds out the casual fans from the diehards, and “Funny Farm” finds Gibson tackling some country-metal chicken pickin’ that could be a distant cousin of a Jimmy Page solo (think "Bron Yar Stomp" on a distorted bass), before the riffage nearly bashes itself to shambles. Aside from these sidesteps, the most significant change from early albums is in the production, which is extra fuzzed-out and blown apart. It’s an exhausting, aneurysm-inducing experience, but with an adrenalin-fueled duo like Lightning Bolt, the fact that they aren’t showing any signs of maturity can only be viewed as a good thing. Fans of spastic and difficult music, take heed. | ||
 | Album: 6 of 10 Title: The Flaming Lips with Lightning Bolt Released: 2011-07-26 Tracks: 4 Duration: 22:12 Scroll: Up Down Top Bottom 25% 50% 75% AlbumCover | 1 I’m Working at NASA on Acid (07:59) 2 I Want to Get High But I Don’t Want Brain Damage (04:46) 3 NASA’s Final Acid Bath (04:59) 4 I Want to Get Damaged but I Won’t Say Hi (04:28) |
 | Album: 7 of 10 Title: I Found a Ring in My Ear Released: 2012-02-24 Tracks: 1 Duration: 20:29 Scroll: Up Down Top Bottom 25% 50% 75% AlbumCover | 1 I Found a Ring in My Ear (20:29) |
 | Album: 8 of 10 Title: 20 Released: 2012-04-02 Tracks: 1 Duration: 20:58 Scroll: Up Down Top Bottom 25% 50% 75% AlbumCover | 1 20 (20:58) |
 | Album: 9 of 10 Title: Oblivion Hunter Released: 2012-09-25 Tracks: 7 Duration: 38:15 Scroll: Up Down Top Bottom 25% 50% 75% Spotify Allmusic Wikipedia AlbumCover | 1 King Candy (04:43) 2 Baron Wasteland (06:41) 3 Oblivion Balloon (03:19) 4 Fly Fucker Fly (03:46) 5 The Soft Spoken Spectre (01:13) 6 Salamander (05:07) 7 World Wobbly Wide (13:26) |
| Oblivion Hunter : Allmusic album Review : Providence, Rhode Island noise duo Lightning Bolt built their reputation on Brian Gibsons muscular basslines, Brian Chippendales nearly possessed drumming, and the happy horror show that happens when the two meet up. Lightning Bolt started up in the mid-90s, but took their time with slowly developing their sound, evolving subtly over the course of five albums in a ten-year period between 1999 and 2009. Released in 2001, Ride the Skies was a buzzingly euphoric proclamation of noisy mania, while ensuing records reached into the influence of both hard rock swagger and harsh noise textures. Oblivion Hunter is a shorter statement from the band, culled mostly from loose, gritty jam sessions from 2008, tapes long shelved and forgotten until this release. Theres a freedom to the playing that sets it apart from the more meticulously crafted confined chaos of Lightning Bolts proper albums. Songs like the tom-tom battle cry of "King Candy" and the road-raging "Oblivion Balloon" sound like at least somewhat formed songs, with Gibsons proto-metal riffs propelled by Chippendales pummelingly straightforward beats and delayed howling. The recording sounds decidedly tossed-off and raw, not unlike the bands earliest scuzzy lo-fi productions. Drumstick count-offs click the songs in and they all fizzle out into soupy endings marked by vocal chirps or bandmembers saying "We got it!" This is clearly not a pained-over studio affair, but there are moments when that works to the albums benefit. The candidness of Oblivion Hunter captures a lot of Lightning Bolts spontaneity, which is one of the bands best attributes. Even still, the albums loose feel can wear thin before too long. The semi-acoustic one-minute doodle "The Soft Spoken Spectre" adds a piecemeal feeling to the album more than it offers a breather. The whole second half of the album sounds half-baked, with the 13-minute album closer "World Wobbly Wide" so jammy and monotonous it dissolves into self-indulgent instrument-bludgeoning before the two-minute mark. In their purest moments, Lightning Bolt are an ungovernable force, a noise machine so tight and shiny they seem like they were born locked into their own particular cacophonous nirvana. Oblivion Hunter is light on those moments of focus, and instead offers a look into the process that gets the band to that point. For enthusiasts or obsessive fans, this unpolished look in will be a treat, but for everyone else, the album is not without its highlights but little more than a glorified practice tape. | ||
 | Album: 10 of 10 Title: Fantasy Empire Released: 2015-03-24 Tracks: 9 Duration: 47:57 Scroll: Up Down Top Bottom 25% 50% 75% Spotify Allmusic Wikipedia AlbumCover | 1 The Metal East (04:12) 2 Over the River and Through the Woods (06:30) 3 Horsepower (04:42) 4 King of My World (03:57) 5 Mythmaster (05:01) 6 Runaway Train (04:37) 7 Leave the Lantern Lit (01:16) 8 Dream Genie (06:21) 9 Snow White (& The 7 Dwarves Fans) (11:21) |
| Fantasy Empire : Allmusic album Review : The 20-year anniversary of Providence, Rhode Island noise rock institution Lightning Bolt arrived in 2015. Though their inception was as a trio with Hisham Bharoocha, his leaving the band in the late 90s to begin similarly minded freak unit Black Dice left behind the duo of bassist Brian Gibson and drummer Brian Chippendale, both insanely powerful and unique players who formed a terrifying and magical whole much larger than the sum of its parts when coming together as Lightning Bolt. While the band only grew stronger through countless international shows and recordings, the thick layers of noise that emanated from home-crafted speaker cabinets and feedback-spewing contact mikes were replicated in the bands albums through their often lo-fi recording means. Even when they opted for a professional studio over low-tech home recording, the results often seemed thin, struggling to capture the intensity of the bands now legendary live shows. Sixth album Fantasy Empire is their first full-length of new material since 2009s Earthly Delights and also is their first effort put to tape with the full benefit of a highly functioning studio and long-labored production. Recorded at Rhode Islands Machines with Magnets studio, the nine tracks here are far and away the most high-definition recordings the duo has ever mustered, particularly bringing into focus Gibsons ever-demented and sometimes washed-out bass tones. Working with the limitations of their spare instrumentation, Lightning Bolt have slowly added texture over time by getting more into live looping and an ever-growing bevy of pedals adding dimension to Gibsons thundering bass tones. All of this comes into crystalline shape on Fantasy Empire. Chippendales manic drumming is contrasted by his strange tape loops, as when the near ambient sound collage of "Leave the Lantern Lit" is abruptly shattered by the near-metal force of "Dream Genie." Getting to hear the band in a fuller spectrum of sound uncovers technical precision and nonstop intensity that were buried on previous efforts. While they stick closer to the traditionally heavy, sometimes ham-fisted hard rock compositions they began investigating almost a decade earlier on Hypermagic Mountain, the songs ring especially weird and unstoppable in their new clarity. Album closer "Snow White (& the 7 Dwarves Fans)" brings all of Fantasy Empires best elements together, with manipulated vocal loops, dynamic riffing, and unhinged near-free drumming exploding in a metered, hypnotic assault that never loses power for any of its more than 11-minute running time. | ||