Lightning Bolt: Sucky?
 

I got a CD-R of Wonderful Rainbow...I give it about 2 stars....kind of annoying, crappy, devoid of substance. I know there are some fans in here...If you like, we can exchange negative rep.

Annoying? Crappy? There's plenty of substance there.

Like how? In that they repeat the same phrases endlessly, or ruin any good chord progression by destroying it with senseless noise?

i dont like their music, the drums are really annoying. Its good that they realize that they sound like classic rock though, that makes them better than black dice.

incinerate
incinerate
incinerate
incinerate

I never heard Black Dice, but read that they were very pointless. Lightning Bolt sounds like heavy metal to me, or Joe Satriani, plus a bunch of senseless noise that is counterintuitive to what pleases the ear.

that's called a chorus...it doesn't repeat endlessly. There is this one part in Wonderful Rainbow where they repeat the same three notes for two minutes.

They aren't a band based on chord progression and some songs on wonderful rainbow, like 2 towers for instance, repeat the same phrases a lot but that's just how that album was. To call them sucky though? They're one of the only bands i've seen and heard of that can have an entire room packed with people on their feet dancing, 80 percent of those people not even able to see the band. It's about the live experiance.

i love Lightning Bolt. i've never listened to Wonderful Rainbow, but i think Hypermagic Mountain is the best driving album of all time.

I haven't seen them live, but if the album can't compare to the live experience it's not worth it. I read some comments comparing them to jazz? Maybe that's why I don't like it...I think most jazz is boring...although honestly Lightning Bolt sounds more like heavy metal to me.

i take it that you're not a fan of heavy metal? (should that sentence have a question mark at the end?)

i've never seen them live (although i really really want to) but i've read that it's fucking crazy.

thanks for plagiarizing me...

One of the best experiances of my life. Probably the only time I could give two shits about other peoples' sweat dripping on me because I was probably doing the same to them. It was really intense.

I like Sabbath and some other things, but the kind of metal that Lightning Bolt reminds me of I don't like...I'm talking about that guitar virtuoso-type of metal which is all about technical ability and how fast the guitarist can play arpeggios, etc.

plagiarism is a really flawed concept.

keep telling yourself that

Lightning Bolt are one of the few bands who know how to use noise in an interesting way. The sound is very full. Chippendale is a wonderful drummer and Gibson can play bass very uniquely (due to his set up).
Wonderful Rainbow is one of the best noise albums made.

I put Hypermagic Mountain in my Top Ten albums of '05 last year. I wouldn't say they are sucky, but they aren't "all that" either --to the extent that they are discussed here at this forum anyways. As far as newer bands go, they are one of the best. Ultimately, I wouldn't go to far out of my way to defend them from the charge of "Thou Suck!" though.

Certainly, Black Dice aren't sucky; they have lots of sounds & ample substance if you know their catalogue.

Senseless noise: Wolf Eyes, Hair Police, glitch noise (don't know anymore band names, don't care to)

I'm with you on that.

I really disagree...The album that I heard was one of the least interesting uses of noise I have ever encountered....it was as if they were trying to take noise to a new level and only succeeded in being completely offensive.

They're not trying to take noise to a new level. They're playing their instruments, creating noise, just trying to have fun. They're not meant to be anything but a very fun, entertaining band, and they succeed at that.
Their noise is defintely not offensive (except the s/t).

They seem to take "annoying" to an almost offensive level for me...in that they are obviously pushing the limits of loud noise + repetition, without any melodic sensibility to redeem it or give it substance....the little vocals there are seem to be high-pitched squealing that is indecipherable, and the guitars drown it out.....It's like this band decided to take all the wrong elements and put them together.

No, the lyrics aren't meant to be deciphered really, they're just short little sayings that chippendale writes minus Dead Cowboy. They don't just repeat themselves, you're backing up your opinion based on like 2 or 3 songs off of one fucking album. They take a lot of different elements and put them together well for a drum and bass duo.

I heard the whole album. Obviously I can't comment on the whole catalogue.

There is 'melodic sensiblity' in their music, it's what makes up the 'annoying' repition. The lyrics are meant to be indecipherable. In fact, I believe that the vocals are used as an instrument in the music and not meant to be focused on.
But you can't diss the band. You only have enough experience with them to critique one album, not the entire band. In fact, Wonderful Rainbow and Hypermagic Mountain are quite different.

But you're making an opinion about the band. If you had said " I don't like Wonderful Rainbow by Lightning Bolt because of the pointless repitition blah blah etc." I think I would understand your point of view better.

It's the same thing with most music. Songs are composed of a few sections. With Lightning Bolt, this formula is sonicly distilled into more readily apparent cycles of repetition, that's all. It's a disorienting, challenging sense of "melody" based on the few riffs of the song. The result is a visceral bombast, hence the references to the live shows. & the push of the homegrown cyberpunk dynamics are for real. They are put together with some discernable intelligence & sense of aesthetic. One can hear that they've arrived at their sound not by honing a craft, but by painstaking loving their art over time. There's no Nickelbacking here with some producer creating heaviness out of yesterday's poop.

But...consider that, say, Talking Heads, wrote lots of songs with only one chord & many of the are really, in actuality, far heavier & more intense (chuckle if you like) than anything Lightning Bolt will ever produce.
Two different ways of seeing the creativity expressed with a somewhat limited palette I suppose, based on taste, you might say. One probably hasn't heard the right Talking Heads if they disagree, but I'm not trying to make this a versus thread, especailly since they sound nothing alike.

Very different. Infact, Hypermagic is their "metal" album by most terms.

All I can say is that I hope Wonderful Rainbow doesn't define the future of music in any way. Although in the past I have been horrified by senseless music and learned to accept it...there is a general "dumbing down" of music, in the same way that language and grammar degenerate, and the mistakes become accepted usage.

Lightning Bolt's music is dumb in no way at all, if you could play drums anywhere close to how well chippendale does or bass to the level that gibson does then you could call them whatever you'd want and have somewhat of a point. And it's one band, one that most people have no idea about so how could they define the future of music? Noise in general is a fairly new genre and probably will pass like other genre phases, or at least a lot of the glitch noise stuff going on.

Wonderful Rainbow will not define the future of music.
I don't believe that there is a 'dumbing down' of music. New musical ideas are being explored and though they might seem dumb, they're actually quite creative.
Again, though, your speaking in terms of Lightning Bolt and not music in general.

That's why I said "I hope." And btw I titled this thread "Sucky?" not "Sucky!"

Hope is not definitive. I'm telling you definitively Wonderful Rainbow will not define future music.

I agree. Hair Police blow. Wolf Eyes is ok but I hate how they have such a fucking following and how they get everyone to headbang with their gay little fist pumps.

i like prurient. when he has a set, no one talks or does anything...

Actually, I am talking about the use of noise on Lightning Bolt, which is a relatively new use of noise, in that it is a new style of noise (to my ears) which doesn't seem to work at all for me. In that sense, it seems to me that this band has taken elements of noise and made them seemingly less legitimate, and more annoying.

And there is a "dumbing down" in music.

Musical obscurity is very appealing to fans, I guess, and Wolf Eyes is, or was?, an obscure band.

There are elements to noise? It's...I mean....umm....noise.
You've must have never listened to Hair Police..or Wolf Eyes..

It's a detuned bass guitar through some distortion pedals, no joke. It doesn't work for YOU. And to classify them, and any band for that matter, under noise is pointless. It's become such a pointless classification, like someone asking you about a band and telling them they're alternative.

No, I've never heard those bands. And yeah, I would say that noise has elements to it. Noise is best when it is structured or falls under a melodic umbrella. Noise can also be formless, but even then it follows certain aesthetic guideliness. Lightning Bolt for me just seems to be fucking annoying....don't know how else to put it. I tried to like it--there were about three or four minutes of the album that were good.