What's with the lukewarm response to Psychic Paramount? Because the two best tracks on there mop the floor, in terms of sheer intensity, with anything Lightning Bolt has ever done. Mind you, I love them both. And Psychic Paramount is more the prog side of implosive guitar/drums mayhem while LB is the scrappy punk rock side. I guess I just can't believe my ears with either band, and wonder what fickle mandate made one more attention-worthy than the other. Perhaps I'm just getting ahead of myself, as Psychic Paramount hasn't put together a full-length yet. Whatever the case, fans of mind-blowingly loud, careening rock ecstasy should get anything and everything available by Psychic Paramount. For those of you who feel you only need one of this sort of thing, you're dead wrong.
Now, on to this new Lightning Bolt. So far, reviewers are lamenting that Hypermagic Mountain shows stagnancy. That makes me laugh. Not really. Actually, that makes me feel confused. When I play this behemoth of a record, all of my relativistic critical bullshit goes bye-bye. All concerns over structure, consistency, variety, depth and even melody are lost to the blood-curdling passion coming out of the speakers. Unlike Oxes, Hella, or some such wankery, this wankery is insistently, urgently infectious. It holds fast to the ground, obliterating everything that stands in its way. I know, I know. That sounds like some inane soundbite cliché. This time it's true. Every goddamned thing on this record is boring into the earth's core, straight as a goddamned arrow. Another cliché. Yeah well, what this record does so well is clichéd. It's cheap and tawdry and godawful and mesmerizingly so. Logic and pasty critique pings off of the Hypermagic Mountain and shatters into a million pathetic molecular shitflecks.
The word "hypermagic" means Merlin in a full-bodied epileptic fit. But he could be dancing! He could also be dancing. Give him some more Ritalin.
Some Hypermagic moments:
1. Sharp knives emerge from my every pore, then I drop down from the rafters on a crowd of unsuspecting System of a Down fans.
2. It begins raining skulls on the baseball field during a key moment in the play-offs. Once the whole field is covered with skulls, more skulls fall and shatter off the bottom layer of skulls. This continues until Yankee Stadium is filled to the brim with skulls.
3. A pizza parlor grows legs and shits grease diarrhea all over the college dorms as it runs amuck in a college town near you!
4. Freddy Krueger is breakdancing at the square. During a complicated spin move, he falls face-first on his own glove. He pulls his face off and twirls it into the crowd like a pair of satin panties.
5. Anna Nicole Smith is eating spaghetti off of her cleavage with no hands while hanging upside down off of a tightrope walking tiger.
HYPERMAGIC! Catch some! Call it speed-blues, call it David Copafeel on ice. Call it Fantasia 20666. Call it ludicrous-speed booger flicking! I don't care. Just buy it already. Don't buy into nuthin. What am I, a politician? Am I an indie kid? What self-respecting human being allows himself to be called "indie?" How fucking atrocious would that be? I'm spouting off, but fuggit.
This is a great record, if it is a record. Me, I thought it was my own sweet sopping wet blood spattering in my ears for an hour.
1. 2 Morro Morro Land
2. Captain Caveman
3. Birdy
4. Riffwraith
5. Megaghost
6. Magic Mountain
7. Dead Cowboy
8. Bizarro Zarro Land
9. Mohawkwindmill
10. Bizarro Bike
11. Infinity Farm
12. No Rest For The Obsessed