Lightning Bolt is a 2 piece noise rock band from Providence R.I. Lead by Brian Chippendale on drums and vocals, the band has been around for almost 20 years, and they’re finally getting the attention that they deserve.
On Saturday night, the band flew through a thrashy set to a sold out crowd at Le Poisson Rouge. They drew mostly from their latest album Fantasy Empire, which came out earlier this year. On bass, Brian Gibson had a stoically calm presence that plays off of Chippendale’s playful mania, and the entire place went wild almost immediately after the drums kicked in for their first song “The Metal East.”
The crowd was rowdy, and threw me from the back to the front and back again, like a ping pong ball, and it seemed an appropriate level of immersion, giving myself up to the music. Chippendale had on his mask which had a microphone taped on the inside and sounded abrasively distorted, rising just above the rest of the instruments. He made some banter with the audience asking for questions and making jokes. It expertly toed the line between inviting and pummeling.
They played my favorite songs from from Fantasy Empire, running through “Over the River and Through the Woods,” “Horsepower” (my favorite song from the album), and album closer “Snow White (& the 7 Dwarves Fan)” which closed out their set.
After a short breather, the band encored with their most popular song and crowd pleaser “Dragula Mountain” off of 2003’s Wonderful Rainbow, which had Chippendale pulling people up on stage and a small semi-circle of people formed around the drums and bass. This show was a successful jolt of fun and loud, and I left with some memorable black and blues.
Article: Steven Klett
