Album Review: Lightning Bolt - Oblivion Hunter

Artist: Lightning BoltAlbum: Oblivion Hunter EPLabel: LoadRelease Date: September 25, 2012One generally doesn’t need to strain to pick up subtleties in Lightning Bolt’s music. It is what it is, and what it is is full-out aural assault. Since 1994, the Providence, RI noise rock pair of Brians (bassist Brian Gibson and drummer / mask-wearing yelper Brian Chippendale) has been thrashing out fast, aggressive music to help people in mosh pits lose their hearing and shoes. Once you’ve become accustomed to their distinctive brand of racket, however, it becomes clear that there’s method to the madness more than just sadistic noise. Their music is often described in terms of influences least obvious in their music; the band cites composer Phillip Glass and jazz musician Sun Ra. Oblivion Hunter is a collection of unreleased material recorded in 2008, a year before their latest LP, Earthly Delights, and three years after Hypermagic Mountain.“Baron Wasteland,” the second track and highlight of the EP, takes on jazzy improvisation (Sun Ra-esque, come to think of it) with screams of distorted feedback and phaser-gun effects, dancing around a steady beat (by Lightning Bolt’s frenzied standards).“The Soft Spoken Spectre” is a quiet guitar track, a pleasant, brief break from the madness, and also their first recording in 18 years that might be hard to recognize as Lightning Bolt in a different context. It is sandwiched between “Fly Fucker Fly” and “Salamander,” two pretty similar-sounding fist-pumping demonstrations Brian Gibson’s heavily-modified bass guitar's upper register.Lightning Bolt has the distinction of being intensely fierce and playful at the same time, and Oblivion Hunter is their most playful release since 2001's Ride the Skies. That being said, the composition of these songs also seems the most simple and off-handed yet (perhaps that’s why they were previously unreleased). “Oblivion Balloon” sounds like a rough cut of what would become the better track “The Sublime Freak” on Earthly Delights, and final track “World Wobbly Wide” is a slightly annoying patience tester at over 13 abrasive minutes’ worth of guitar noodling. Still, as a whole, this composition isn’t a step back. Oblivion Hunter isn’t Lightning Bolt’s most accessible release, nor is it a perfect representation of all they have to offer, but I don’t think it was intended to be. Instead, it is a sort of statement of purpose for the band, that they make music, not to flesh out some sort of modern noise music canon, but simply because it’s what they do, and they do love what they do.

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