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The case for music as a religious experience collapses the second life grants you a glimpse of true beauty and terror via psilocybin or panic disorder or, like, running too fast for too long, but there are bands who can bring you to the brink of understanding. Lightning Bolt and Liturgy, who share a label (Thrill Jockey) and a purpose (sonic overload), both excel at the kind of incredibly loud wizardry that can get you where you might not otherwise go. That they approach the problem of lifting listeners into the stratosphere from different angles pretty much guarantees at least modest mind elevation when the acts share a bill.
Liturgyâs snooty ambitions in the metal realm have angered and annoyed purists who clearly just canât handle an âextremeâ band whose members donât look like they have day jobs delivering pizzas. Although mastermind-frontman Hunter Hunt-Hendrixâs stage presence does evince a noxious self-regardâhis bearing suggests someone who truly believes playing a guitar is the most difficult thing a human being can doâthere is no denying the power of Liturgyâs music once you are in a position to be properly seduced by it.
It might not trigger sublime revelation and transform Hunt-Hendrix into a god, but Liturgy's pursuit of black-metal's hypnotic core makes for transfixing live entertainment. Becoming transfixed is your only option, really: Like a black cloud that never breaks to give up the good stuff, Liturgy menaces without deigning to delight. Somehow simultaneously droning and frantic, the band perches itself on a crescendo's precipice and stays there for what feels like forever, teasing at a crowd's desire to move until the desire morphs into a battered sort of mindfulness. Consider it the loudest of all yoga practices. So fuck corpse paint. Bring on corpse pose.
And who would want to even think about trying to beat Lightning Bolt at its own crowd-pleasing game, anyway? The revered Providence, R.I., duo no longer shuns the stage, so the collective heave of hot flesh instigated by its unrelenting noise rock isn't nearly as dangerous as it was 10 years ago, but that's not a bad thing at all. Most of us probably want to die at some point, but no one wants their parents to find out they perished while desperately attempting to jockey for a spot near a ride cymbal.
While the standard crush of men who must assert their viability as passable-if-ultimately-disappointing sperm donors by throwing their dumb bodies around is still a very real problem for anyone seeking the day-long deafness resulting from a close encounter with Lightning Bolt's rig, you can now retreat to an outer ring of the Asshole Zone and behold the band's majesty from a safe distance. Not too safe, though: To share a room with Lightning Bolt is to relive the damaging, epiphanic moment you decided listening to people play music was maybe more worthwhile than trying really hard to contribute something good and lasting to the world. Its unclassifiable and irresistible racket hasn't matured so much as accreted, the combined force of Brian Gibson's metal-inflected bass riffage and Brian Chippendale's borderline arrhythmic action drumming so dense and perfect now that it shouldn't be on a stage but an altar. Lightning Bolt would probably rather still be on the floor, but that's how you know you've chosen the right God.
All photos by Thomas Teal.
LITURGY
LIGHTNING BOLT
WWeek 2015