Lightning Bolt @ the hook 5/7/06

Lightning Bolt hadnt graced nyc with thier presence since early august. Since then they have released an entire new album, to great acclaim including my own. They have also spawned brian gibson's side project Wizardzz which is also pretty awesome, how couldnt it be? so i had incredibly high expectations for thier first show in 9 months, but i was somewhat disappointed. not highly, but somewhat. they just seemed rusty, they had some technical problems, but that wasnt even it, something was missing and it was just the vibe that was being spread, something felt funky. maybe they just hadnt been touring as hard and werent in full swing yet, that shouldnt be a problem now that they are on tour for the rest of the summer, including a week or two in japan. they just didnt play the hits, they played only a few tracks off the new album a few oldies and then some freejams that just didnt seem like killer LB jams. no 13 monsters, no draculas mountain. i wanted to hear more of the new album since ive had the time to absorb it because it really does just blow all thier other efforts out of the water, but maybe they just cant do it all at once since it is so incredibly heavy. oh well, i am in no way put off, ill be there front and center next time but for now all i can do is hope that ill get my head blown off next time. one pretty cool thing about the performance was they have this new setpiece that is a huge convex mirror that is mounted above thier amps and set at an angle so if you are short or out of range of the melee you can still see the LB rocking out backwards, but you cant really get a picture of it because it shoots your flash right back at ya. also so many people shoot video at these bolt shows i go to, but none of that footage comes to light, sure there is some shit on youtube, but not everything. you can hear some recent perf clips over at thier site from thier terrastock set. until next timel: "shwa shshhsh ammash shmoo yawashaa!" -brian chippendale.