Hypermagic Mountain

(Load)

4/5 Stars

At one time, only conservative detractors of music they deemed too loud, fast, or hard referred to it as “noise.” Elvis Presley, the Beatles, the Ramones, Public Enemy; all of them were saddled with this dubious mantle in their time by more conservative tastes, before eventually winning enough converts to establish their legitimacy.

Understandably enough given the term’s pejorative use, any attempt at music that actually based itself around earth shattering, throbbing atonal sound has been marginalized.

Experimenters and lunatics from Lou Reed to Merzbow have been biding their time for decades, stirring up trouble just off stage, while their shrieking sounds wait for the proper time to storm the music world and blow your ears out.

Over the past few years, noise rock bands have been building a following large enough to make even the bravest indie soul think the sky is falling.

Since the beginning of the new millennium, Providence, Rhode Island’s Load Records has been a staging ground for the new noise phalanx, with Lightning Bolt leading the vanguard.

“Hypermagic Mountain” is the band’s fourth studio release, and if you need a clue as to what to expect, just look at the album cover.

The frantic, crowded collage of bright, merging images—with the energy-infused title squeezed in—is an appropriate visualization for the sonic frenzy.

This two man band embodies the old adage “less is more,” unleashing a brutal sonic assault with just a deafening drum set and a pulsing bass guitar careening along at breakneck speed.

Forming in the late ’90s, the fearsome twosome garnered considerable praise and recognition with their 2001 debut album, “Ride the Skies,” and have been rumbling along ever since, crushing anything in their way.

Lightning Bolt remains a threatening aural juggernaut, and the next two tracks, “Captain Caveman” and “Birdy,” feature a much darker, more ominous rumbling.

These tracks are energized even more by head-shrieker Brian Chippendale’s high pitched shouting. These yelps lend their ethereal echo to the ghastly zeitgeist of “Riffwraith” and “Megaghost.”

Lightning Bolt’s reputation largely relies on their chaotic, crowd-inclusive shows that have come perilously close to bringing the roof down on a series of claustrophobic, raucous venues.

“Hypermagic Mountain” replicates such an experience with unprecedented authenticity. Recorded live on two tracks with real-time mixing, the bass sounds almost tangibly thicken the atmosphere.

From the start, “2 Morro Morro Land” has the band briefly fiddling around before launching into a soaring, metal bass riff that descends into a tangled mess of Blitzkrieg-quick drumming and chainsaw guitar sounds.

This is the closest the band ever comes to a feel-good track, hinting that their take on noise rock is starting to lean closer to the rock end of the spectrum.

The band abandons much of their nascent rock sensibility in the album’s second half, essentially returning to the primordial noise from which they rose.

The title track starts in the bowels of the earth and reaches a perilously high crescendo, tumbling down in a beautiful mess that beats on head and heart like a hammer: a five-minute crystallization of Lightning Bolt’s sound.

“Hypermagic Mountain” rises to the same exemplary, destructive standards as their previous efforts, claiming interesting and provocative territory for rock music, even if it may take a generation or more for mainstream tastes to concur.