Lightning Bolt

So epic they make Coldplay vomit. One of the best live shows I've ever seen. Their energy is just through the roof. Amazing.

My girlfriend and I arrived about 20 minutes after the doors opened, and we managed to get a fairly good spot, about four rows of people back from the stage or so. Shortly after we got there the first band came on, The Gondoliers. Three men in hard hats - one singer, one guitarist/keyboardist, one drummer. They were good. The keyboard especially, I thought. The second opening act was Buck Gooter, a duo - one keyboardist? (he played some kind of instrument that produced harsh noise very well) and one guitarist. They both sang, the keyboardist? mainly though. And the keyboardist? was kind of what you'd expect a hardcore singer to look like - young, shaved head, rather muscular, with a ton of stage presence - he staggered around the stage, screaming and occasionally putting the entire microphone into his mouth, and jumping into the audience. The guitarist looked old enough to be his dad, at least - grey dreadlocks, and he played an acoustic guitar with a better-than-healthy amount of pedal effects. They were very good, and played a rather lengthy set. Throughout the opening acts, Brian Chippendale's drums could be seen behind the stacks of amplifiers that crowded the stage. They were clearly his, as they were covered in stickers of every sort - I noticed a SpongeBob one. And his amps were also clearly marked, covered in spray paint, the top one looking like a cross-eyed face. His bass drum came out, lacking a front head - possibly for better mic placement? Finally, the duo came on stage. Chippendale said something into the microphone - the drummer from Gondoliers is, in fact, Brian Gibson's brother, apparently - and then the mask went on. Brian Chippendale channels something. Devil or god or simply force of nature, I don't know. His eyes roll back into his head, his voice chopped and twisted through however many pedal effects, his entire body moves with every drum stroke. Right at the beginning of the show, some complete asshole threw a beer can at his head and he either didn't notice or didn't care, because he didn't pause for as much as a second. Brian Gibson did not, I believe, crack a smile or speak a word for the entirety of the evening. Perhaps a different kind of trance. The show was absolutely ritualistic. People threw themselves into each other in the mosh pit as the sound of 1,000 elephant stampedes billowed from the stage. Not a single song was clear, it all just melted into a collage of noise. Except for Colossus, I recognized that. And it was an album track that they ended with, I'm not sure of the name - it opens with Chippendale layering his vocals over each other several times before the music starts? And I imagine they opened with Sound Guardians, though I can't remember for sure, and it's likely Horsepower, Megaghost, and Dead Cowboy were in the setlist somewhere. For the last song, he announced into his mask that it would be their last song - "One more" echoed and reverberated on top of itself over and over again. I liked that. At some point during the last song I moshed my way to the front row. It couldn't have lasted for more than 30 seconds, but they were long 30 seconds. It was amazing. Lightning Bolt are one of the greatest bands and live acts operating right now, and if you owe it to yourself not to pass it up. NOTE: They do not have t-shirts! Which was somewhat disappointing but it prompted me to spend money on their new album, so not at all a total loss.