‘Fantasy Empire’, the first new music from cult Rhode Island duo Lightning Bolt in five years, is “a raging album for a raging time in a raging world,” drummer Brian Chippendale tells NME. If anyone can capture the chaotic sensory-overload of modern life it’s Lightning Bolt – a band who, across their 20 years as arch art-metal racket-makers, have held a mirror to our increasingly manic, maxed-out, digitised times. Their five albums till now have been frantic hurricanes of fuzz-dripped sound: a din of ADD drums, overblown bass lines and distorted vocals, squawked over piercing shards of feedback that – like our mayhemic 21st century – is equal parts confusing and thrilling. This much-anticipated, equally frenzied sixth album might be called ‘Fantasy Empire’, but like everything Lightning Bolt touch, its violent noises are born of our own twisted reality.
‘The Metal East’, the album’s opener, “sets the tone” for the rest of the record, according to Chippendale, thundering through four minutes of sinister low-end rumbles, skittish percussion and animal screams. Dark and haunting? Yes. But a tonne of fun too. The pair’s live shows are a thing of legend, typically setting up on the floor in the middle of the crowd, like something out of a pandemonious guerrilla rave. I’ve still got some bruises from the last Lightning Bolt show I went to, and that was in 2008. A breathless rollercoaster of lysergic riffs, ‘The Metal East’ will fit in right at home live amidst fan-favourites like ‘Dracula Mountain’ and ‘Assassins’. Give it a listen below and keep an eye out for ‘Fantasy Empire’, out on March 23.