Hypermagic Mountain

Hypermagic Mountain is the fourth studio album by American noise rock band Lightning Bolt, released October 18, 2005.

Hypermagic Mountain
Studio album by
Lightning Bolt
ReleasedOctober 18, 2005
RecordedProvidence, Rhode Island
GenreNoise rock
Length56:44
LabelLoad (LOAD #78)
ProducerDave Auchenbach
Lightning Bolt chronology
Wonderful Rainbow
(2003)		 Hypermagic Mountain
(2005)		 Earthly Delights
(2009)

Background

The band and their sound engineer, Dave Auchenbach, recorded the album in a house in Providence, Rhode Island directly onto a 2 track DAT master tape.[1] The album is a clear continuation of the sound they established on their previous albums, featuring a very dense sound composed almost entirely of distorted, often-processed bass guitar; loud, fast drums; and indiscernible vocals buried in the album's mix. The album's artwork was drawn by Brian Chippendale; the album's title was not decided until after the artwork was finished.[2]

Critical reception
Professional ratings
Aggregate scores
SourceRating
Metacritic88/100[3]
Review scores
SourceRating
AllMusic[4]
Alternative Press5/5[5]
Blender[6]
Entertainment WeeklyB[7]
Mojo[8]
NME9/10[9]
Pitchfork7.3/10[10]
PopMatters8/10[11]
Stylus MagazineA−[12]
Uncut[13]

Hypermagic Mountain was met with near-universal acclaim, with an average of 88 out of 100 based on 23 reviews on Metacritic.[3] The same site rates the album at number 42 on the all-time highest rated albums,[14] and as the fourth best album of 2005.[15] Stylus Magazine's Roque Strew hailed the album as "another stride toward the perfection of [Lightning Bolt's] prog-noise esthetic",[12] while Prefix Magazine's Aaron Richter called it Lightning Bolt's "most accomplished effort to date, one-upping 2003’s Wonderful Rainbow with a fresh sense of maturity."[16] Pitchfork's Brandon Stosuy similarly described Hypermagic Mountain as the band's "most well-oiled album", but criticized that "somewhere in the middle a lack of variety creates a dull patch."[10] Joe Martin, in CMJ New Music Monthly, said that the album's "craft-refinement has an exhilaration all of its own".[17]

Track listing

All tracks are written by Lightning Bolt.

No.TitleLength
1."2 Morro Morro Land"3:43
2."Captain Caveman"3:19
3."Birdy"3:06
4."Riffwraiths"3:03
5."Megaghost"6:01
6."Magic Mountain"4:55
7."Dead Cowboy"7:58
8."Bizarro Zarro Land"4:47
9."Mohawk Windmill"9:38
10."Bizarro Bike"5:18
11."Infinity Farm"2:46
12."No Rest for the Obsessed"2:10
Total length:56:44

Personnel
gollark: I could probably draw my own equally arbitrary ones.
gollark: Why specifically *those*?
gollark: If you just define anything which happens as being part of the balance retroactively, then it is not meaningful to complain about it.
gollark: Well, it's a thing which happens in nature.
gollark: There was an experiment which wanted to demonstrate group selection. They put flies that in an environment with limited resources which could only support so many fly children. If nature was nice and kind, they would magically turn down their breeding. As is quite obvious in retrospect, evolutionary processes would *never do this* and they cannibalized each other's young.

References
  1. Licht, Alan (December 2005). "Lightning Bolt". The Wire (262). Retrieved January 23, 2008.
  2. Weingarten, Christopher (2005). "Deep Cover: Lightning Bolt". CMJ New Music Monthly (136): 50.
  3. "Reviews for Hypermagic Mountain by Lightning Bolt". Metacritic. Retrieved January 14, 2008.
  4. Loftus, Johnny. "Hypermagic Mountain – Lightning Bolt". AllMusic. Retrieved January 14, 2008.
  5. "Lightning Bolt: Hypermagic Mountain". Alternative Press (209): 216. December 2005.
  6. "Lightning Bolt: Hypermagic Mountain". Blender (42): 137. November 2005.
  7. Greenblatt, Leah (October 28, 2005). "Lightning Bolt: Hypermagic Mountain". Entertainment Weekly: 89.
  8. "Lightning Bolt: Hypermagic Mountain". Mojo (145): 105. December 2005.
  9. "Lightning Bolt: Hypermagic Mountain". NME: 45. November 5, 2005.
  10. Stosuy, Brandon (October 18, 2005). "Lightning Bolt: Hypermagic Mountain". Pitchfork. Retrieved January 14, 2008.
  11. Jagernauth, Kevin (December 22, 2005). "Lightning Bolt: Hypermagic Mountain". PopMatters. Retrieved January 14, 2008.
  12. Strew, Roque (October 24, 2005). "Lightning Bolt – Hypermagic Mountain – Review". Stylus Magazine. Archived from the original on February 20, 2006. Retrieved January 14, 2008.
  13. "Lightning Bolt: Hypermagic Mountain". Uncut (102): 108. November 2005.
  14. "All-Time High and Low". Metacritic. Archived from the original on January 8, 2008. Retrieved January 14, 2008.
  15. "Best Albums of 2005". Metacritic. Archived from the original on January 5, 2008. Retrieved January 14, 2008.
  16. Richter, Aaron. "Hypermagic Mountain – Lightning Bolt". Prefix Magazine. Retrieved January 14, 2008.
  17. Martin, Joe (2005). "Lightning Bolt: Hypermagic Mountain". CMJ New Music Monthly (136): 41.
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