Lightning Bolt
Hypermagic Mountain

This is a bizarre and dazzling hyperkinetic stunt, yet it is a simple way to go faster than light. This is the new hypermagic dimension, where the stylistic elements of noise, punk, and metal are fed with the visionary nature of horror and sci-fi only to be thrown randomly into the press, to be squeezed. And the sludge flowing from the press into the drains is black, it does not shine. It is tar. You like it, and you know it is the sum of Lightning Bolt.

Weird alchemists of noise, blissfully unaware of any rules of making music. These sorcerers of nonsensical overexposure. Wizards in the irradiation of gamma rays that burn sound waves even before they propagate and reach you; unaware listener. You who bought the record after seeing them live; for having realized a vague sense of physical safety during the concert and in hopes of bringing home an indelible piece of that same thrilling and exciting shiver.

Lightning Bolt are just two. Brian Chippendale and Brian Gibson. Namely a drum synchronized to impossible times, almost like a drum machine dissolved in brine and a bass that oscillates between tons of feedback and distortion that weave uranium symphonies. Together, a maelstrom of free-noise spread into the air by a wall of amplifiers of devastating power. "Hypermagic Mountain" is all this and aims straight to explode your nerves and brain.

To better convince you of the absolute beauty of this sonic detonation. In opening "2 Morro Morro Land" evokes Led Zeppelin, only to then teleport them into a cartoon world, where a psychotic Doraemon reigns, devoted to ultraviolence. And if an album you've already defined as wonderful after the first track manages to surprise you with the second with a "Captain Caveman" where you imagine the Slayer van skidding due to aquaplaning, there's nothing left but to declare you're facing a masterpiece. You are absolutely sure when in "Bizzarro Arro Land" you're convinced you hear Van Halen blended with an immersion blender. Proceeding by analogy you could jot down an entire list of bands and styles you think flow into the hypnotic dimension of this album (besides the ones already mentioned, in no particular order: Unsane, Metallica, Sonic Youth, Ruins, Jesus Lizard, Boredoms, Melvins, and so on); the point is that this music - violent, percussive, launched at lightning speed - is conceptually dadaist. Insofar as it evokes entirely subjective perceptions, emerging from the layering and condensation of "other" sounds. In every single track, you find an image, a vibration, a primordial energy that refers to something, but you don't know what. You just go along with it. Hypnosis and magic.

You approach Lightning Bolt with revolution in mind, the refoundation of any form of sound, and you worry about only one, fundamental, disconcerting counterindication to listening: after this album, much other music might not appeal to you as much as before. Welcome to the top of the hypermagic mountain.