Lightning Bolt - Earthly Delights

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5...according to our Business Lady on Thu 15 Oct, 2009.

It's 2009 YO!!! About time Lightning Bolt (from here on out referred to as L.B. or the L.B.'s) delivered another long player I hear you say, and your DAMN RIGHT! So, here it is .... 'Earthly Delights' is another kick ass example of why L.B. have caused such a stir over the years. Along with the likes of Arab on Radar, The Locust, Erase Errata, Men's Recovery Project, Numbers, XBXRX, Pink and Brown, USA Is A Monster and many more they have help sculpt one of the finest and most aggressively creative eras in american punk rock. 'Earthly Delights' does not disappoint. Although most will be expecting more of the same I'm convinced that the Brian's have trumped their previous outing 'Hypermagic Mountain' and produced their best work yet. Though the recording technique remains the same the overall sound is much easier to comprehend with a nice balance between the bass and the kit. It's been a while since I've been able to make out any of Chippendale's lyrics but it almost happens a couple of times on 'Earthly Delights'. Opener 'Sound Guardian' is a cheeky start to the album that brings a little of the country twang you might expect from 'Berkley's Backyard Critters' with its ridiculous honky tonk style bass line. This is followed by live favourite 'Nation of Boar' that has been knocking about for a while online via live video footage on the L.B. website. It's an amazingly good tune I tell thee!!! 'Colossus' introduces a riff that can only be described as colossal!!! This tune starts out all bong rock and ends up accelerating to the point of hypnotic sickness. 'Funny Farm' is L.B's fucking with a 'Cotton Eye Joe' style riff with muchos bravado. Again, more amazing riffage on display and one of the most memorable vocals on the album. 'The Sublime Freak' has a totally amazing eastern riff supplemented with a mental timbale snare and an amazing effects saturated vocal line. Again, this tune gets super hypnotic as it picks up momentum. As with all L.B.'s LP's 'Earthly Delights' also embraces total freeform improvisation with enthusiasm and rigour! 'Flooded Chamber' is probably the best of any L.B. improv style freakouts and 'Rain on Lake I'm Swimming In' is L.B.'s taking a tropical, blissed out vibe with surprisingly tasteful results. 'S.O.S.' sees the Brian's at their very best. Gibson is practically shredding on this tune, the riffs are complex and tight with great interplay between the two musicians finally collapsing in an exhausted heap after just three and a half minutes. Short but sweet! Final track 'Transmissionary' is the icing on the cake embracing both metal and dance influences to create a beast of a party number with possibly my favourite Chippendale beat so far and some insane use of echo technology....Sweet. So, another great album from the two Brian's!!! Getting better with age and experience I reckon.... Cheers lads.

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Last we left this amplified tribe of two on 2005 s Hypermagic Mountain , Lightning Bolt were tossing thousand of years worth of musical history into a wood chipper and coming up with some chewy chainsaw taffy. This new missive, Earthly Delights, comes after two years of intensive electro-shock therapy driven recording.. The doors of Lightning Bolt s practice space literally spill forth giga-liters of sweat born of echo-stretched dedication to archaeology of understanding advanced musicology. Taking the lessons of extreme meta and blood-brother marrying them to expansive and explosive song form and applying it to Olympic training methods Earthly Delights uses electric stimulus to shock smile technology to worldwide domes. This is what two thousand years of evolution and the invention of electric instrumentation introduced into the tank of hook force can do to you. Fidelity and attention to tune smithery are total, so please, dear listener place your alabaster hand in mine and embark on a musical journey that will take you to places both divine and sublime. This record has the sound of a ten piece band with a much tighter pay scale, matched with the sonics of military cartoons. This record is truly the sound of the air show ablaze with the joy of a ground-bound fighter powerless to eject. WORLDWIDE TOURING to ensure liberal media carpet bomb - buy nachos, records and beer. Swank art work from Nobel Peace Prize winning artist Brian Chippendale on both CD/LP and etching on 4th side of LP.

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