Wednesday, December 07, 2005

ride the lightning

Lightning Bolt - "Hypermagic Mountain"
Load, 2005

I love the photos you see of Lightning Bolt shows where indie rockers have encircled the duo like they're keeping the cops from getting to a couple of street fighters, and they've all got their arms crossed with blank stares on their faces. How can you not be emoting, you bitches? You're at a fucking Lightning Bolt show! Throw down! There's a Lightning Bolt DVD out, and several songs from it were filmed in David Nelson's basement, and Chris Alexander was in the crowd that night. A song ends, and you can here Chris Alexander go "Dude, will you sign my dick?!"

That's why I love Shreveport, in a nutshell. We're not "with it" enough to know that we're not supposed to show passion about great music. We still yell stupid stuff at the bands we love, we still gush.

The new Lightning Bolt album is INTENSE. And I know that calling and LB album (which on average consists of about 70 minutes of thrashing, convulsive bass guitar and lightning-speed death metal drumming on crack) intense is like calling something that Jesus sais Christian, but who nelly, this album is out of control. It gets transcendentally violent on some songs. It loses all structure and becomes this flailing, prehistoric, strangely meditative thing. No homo.

Ladies and gentlemen, our first "no homo". It is now required by law to say "no homo" a lot of music blogs. At least, according to a bunch of upper-class white dilletantes from Williamsburg it is.

I'm not the biggest Lightning Bolt fan in the world. I wouldn't play it on just any occassion, since it tends to make we want to throw a chair out a plate glass door. But they have done something really incredible on "Hypermagic Mountain" - they seem to have found a way to get so unpredictable, so cathartic, and so balls-to-the-wall batshit insane that the whole thing has taken on a weird kind of symphonic calm. It's not the feeling of getting punched in the face anymore. It's that weird, numb feeling that follows, and the blood pounding in your skull while you stand there trembling, trying to figure out if you can take this guy. I know it sounds crazy. But that's because it is.

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