Lightning Bolt - Earthly Delights

Lightning Bolt are the soundtrack to my angry internal monologue. They make frenetic and at times crushingly heavy music, and people love them for it. Have the duo deviated from the formula on this outing...haha no.

Track one, Sound Guardians, is everything that you could have hoped for in an album opener. Tribal drums, über fuzzed, almost hypnotic bass and a smattering some bluesy slide guitar draw you in before you are dumped head first into a pit of blast beats and dissident noise.

Nation of Boar pounds at your ears with more of the aforementioned brutality, this time with the addition of “vocals”. (I use the term vocals fairly loosely, as I’m sure that some will not consider screaming through a broken and heavily distorting telephone receiver to be vocals...simpletons.) The bass sound at times comes close to a SunnO)))-esque white noise, while the drums carry on seemingly oblivious.

Track 3, Colossus, starts sedately, with vocals reminiscent of Roger Water’s “screeched eagle calls” on the Pink Floyd classic Careful with that Axe Eugene. This pace OBVIOUSLY doesn’t keep up, as Brian Chippendale’s drums hijack the track; however it never truly reaches typical breakneck speed. Technically speaking, this may be what Lightning Bolt regard as a drone. Ultimately Colossus leads to a head, with a Groundhog Day repeating riff and an incessantly oscillating tape sound.

The first few seconds of The Sublime Freak’s intro drums are almost dub-y, albeit ones which have been processed through an angry, speed addled Dalí’s brain. The whole track is like a grotesque mescaline fuelled carnival in triple speed, and is fairly terrifying. Win a prize? I think I will take sanity back please.

Is that Steve Reich I hear fighting with some evil android monkeys? No, it’s Flooded Chamber.

Another blues/country riff permeates the surprisingly chirpy Funny Farm. The track switches between some brutal riffage, and the almost danceable and ho-downy sections like a schizophrenic Jekyll and Hyde.

Rain On Lake I’m Swimming In, is like an early Yes song mixed with a trippy 60’s children’s show about birds. Very odd, but a nice reprise, especially as the next track, S.O.S, is 3 minutes of almost Napalm Death level grindcore aggression, which in all honestly leaves me feeling physically sick. JOB DONE!

The good thing about Lightning Bolt is that although their songs can be fairly brutal, they are also relatively short and are therefore unlikely to do any harm. Album closer Transmissionary however is a full 12+ minutes.

Far from being punishing to listen to, Transmissionary is a masterpiece, with drumming that would make Zach Hill weep into his cornflakes and an ever evolving bass attack, complete with delay and epic pitch shifts. The track is even panned at points giving the feeling that your brain is being flossed.

Once again Lightning Bolt have released another incredible album, with almost hidden flourishes of blues/country, and brief nuggets of psychedelia. Crushingly heavy, yet oddly accessible.

Not available on Spotify

Andy