4 out of 5

Label: Thrill Jockey

Produced by: Seth Manchester and Keith Souza (engineered by)

Sweet, sweet madness.  A lot of the reviews of Fantasy Empire are mentioning that it’s the duo’s first album to successfully capture their energy in a studio, while the group also actually takes advantage of that studio time with some wacky production effects flittering through their fuzzed out bass and pummeling drumming attack.  I can’t tell ya’ whether or not that’s accurate, as, for all intents and purposes, this is my first LB album.  I was exposed to the group upon their debut, but suffering the effects of hatred-by-proxy (I had an intense dislike for one group to which the person who mentioned Lightning Bolt to me listened, and thus I had an intense dislike for everything in their collection), I brushed them off as indie noise wankstars.  This was assisted by the knowledge that they’d come out of RISD – how dare they! – and, soon after, when Black Dice splintered off and became similar regular purchases of tight-pantsed tastemakers, I said fie and went off in search of whatever I considered “real” music.  As has, by this point, been well established: I was / am completely awesome, and my intelligent decisions may one day be the basis for an advanced culture.

Anyhow, as this story had often gone, one day I, realizing that some of the groups I now dug appeared on Load Records (which had gone into the Fie pile with LB), I did some good ol’ smarts thinkin’ and figured I should give Lightning Bolt a try again.  But as this story also goes, but I have perhaps not made clear, I generally don’t consider it as actually “listening” to something unless I can purchase it in some way and give it several dedicated spins on a digital device.  (I guess this purchase plan is how I keep the “I’m a better music fan than you” flame going.)

Conclusion: sweet, sweet madness.  Yes, I spoiled this conclusion above, and yes, I’m filling this review with my entertaining history because I otherwise don’t have much to say.  Fuzzed out bass and pummeling drums; Brian Chippendale’s vocals reverbed out the wazoo and mixed somewhere in the background, his howl – combined with the fantasy-themed song titles – lording over the songs like a ghost from 70s metal.  The recording style is still as mushy as those first, more improvised-seeming records, but, yes, experience and a studio have sharpened the song craft into hook-laden, surging, building blusters with a definite sense of structure.  That big, blown out sound doesn’t sound manipulated, either; you do get the impression this is what you’d get live.

Things flit back and forth between “straight” rockers (opener Metal East; Runaway Train) and epics (like the massive 11-minute closer Snow White (& the 7 Dwarves Fans); Mythmaster).  The only soft spot is in the middle of the disc with King of the World, which seems… just too simple, and goes for a clipped steel drum style beat that just sorta makes the “I am the king of my world” repeated lyric feel hollow and silly.  But, hey, it’s 4 minutes out of 50, and it’s nicely buffered by excellent songs on both sides.

So while my opinion isn’t backed up by a long listening history, it seems the critics and I agree.  If you, fan, come to my page trusting my reviews above all others, were hesitant to pick up Fantasy Empire, wary of the group’s switch to Thrill Jockey and the time gap between this release and the last, worry not: all would appear to be good, and perhaps even better than before.