Review: Lightning Bolt - Fantasy Empire
By Eli Schoop, Contributor
[Thrill Jockey; 2015]
Rating: 3/5
Key Tracks: “The Metal East,” “Over the River and Through the Woods,” “Snow White (& the 7 Dwarves Fans)”
Brian Gibson and Brian Chippendale are a force of nature. Not forces, mind you, because individually one's a bassist with a penchant for a disturbing amount of distortion and the other's a voracious drummer with an intensity that rivals the nearest wind turbine. But when they combine, their power focuses into a musical banshee, and Lightning Bolt represents the most absolute noise-rock in the medium today.
Taking this characterization into account when producing their eighth album Fantasy Empire, Gibson and Chippendale have tried to deviate from the relentless methodology they've relied on in the past by increasing the sound clarity and making their trademark guerrilla assault on your eardrums more fluid and accessible.
This progression is logical and shows a gesture to change up the tried and true formula used for almost 20 years in the band's pathos. However, it comes off as slightly stale and reinforces the idea that Lightning Bolt is unable to distance itself from its most prominent features as a band. It isn't realistic to say every band has to reinvent its sound and concepts on each album, but the cult icons that have been at the forefront of a subgenre for more than a decade should be able to keep creatively fresh.
Fantasy Empire is enjoyable despite feeling like a stagnated effort from the group. It retains the inventive aggression that has become a welcome trademark, with cuts like “The Metal East” proving just as magnificently loud and expressive as ever. It's a doozy of a track, with the temperament of a raging bull but none of the deadly side effects of facing one. “Over the River and Through the Woods” is sewn from the same cloth, a particular gravitas that comes with divinely technical bass playing that can only be possessed by Gibson and Chippendale.
As the album goes on, it becomes harder to differentiate the tracklist. Although “fast and loud” is a purist philosophy that spans modern music, it is not singularly entertaining by itself, even with a band that holds such a signature sound. “Snow White (& the 7 Dwarves Fans)” mixes up this ethos by providing an Orchid-esque slow build-up until all hell is unleashed, with the end result akin to the aftermath of a hurricane. It's 12 minutes long, a rarity for Lightning Bolt, and one of the only experiments here, more of which would have boded better for the full body of work displayed. As it stands, stagnation is too strong a word to describe Fantasy Empire, but innovation isn't exactly correct, either.
