Lightning Bolt (band) - Musical and Lyrical Style

Musical and Lyrical Style

The band's music takes cues from Japanese noise rock bands such as Boredoms and Ruins, although composers Philip Glass and Sun Ra are acknowledged influences. The band's sound consists of Chippendale's frenetic drumming, his usually incomprehensible vocals, and Gibson's rhythmic bass guitar – an example of which is the song "13 Monsters", where Chippendale sings a playground style counting chant through heavy distortion over the instrumentals of his drums and Gibson's bass guitar. As for the band's genre, Brian Gibson is quoted as saying, "I hate, hate, hate the category "noise-punk" I really don't like being labeled with two words that have so much baggage. It’s gross."

As the group's vocalist, Chippendale eschews a conventional microphone, instead using the type of microphone built into a household telephone receiver, held in his mouth or attached to a hood, which is then run through an effects processor to further alter the sound. Chippendale has also used a KMD 8021 Drum Exciter, a simple drum-synth module, triggered by the bass drum.

Gibson plays his bass guitar tuned to cello standard tuning, in intervals of fifths (C G D A), using a banjo string for the high A. He used this four-string setup for several years, but has recently been seen using a five-string setup, tuned to C G D A E, with banjo strings for the A and E. Gibson also uses several effects pedals, including overdrive pedals, an octaver, a delay pedal, and a whammy pedal (pitch shifter).

Like many noise rock bands, Lightning Bolt mostly plays extremely loud, aggressive music. In the film The Power of Salad, Gibson attributes much of their success to volume:

We used to get more negative reactions when didn't have as loud of stuff. It's just, be super loud and you're all set. (laughs) The rock and roll has been revealed. I do feel that that's the message - if there's any message, that's what it is. This is kinda what we do to keep ourselves excited these days. In these days - everyone knows what I'm talking about. (laughs)

The band has reportedly never been a fan of the studio recording process. When they recorded five tracks for their eponymous debut album released in 1999, they discarded four of them and replaced them with lo-fidelity tracks recorded at various live shows from 1997 and 1998. However, their following two albums, Ride the Skies and Wonderful Rainbow, were recorded more traditionally in a studio. For Hypermagic Mountain, half the tracks were recorded in studio, while the rest were performed and recorded in a house direct to a 2-track DAT master tape, where the audio engineer was unable to tell exactly how the final result would sound.

Since the band has only two members and two instruments, their sound has a somewhat limited range, though this is often noted as a positive thing. In one interview, Gibson states that his experiences in Lightning Bolt "has showed the power of an extremely limited palette."

Lightning Bolt's lyrics, when decipherable, are generally tongue-in-cheek, covering such topics as fairy tales, heavy metal clichés, terrorism, anarchy, and superheroes. They delve occasionally into more political subjects, such as the anti-Bush "Dead Cowboy" from Hypermagic Mountain.