This is waaay better than Hypermagic Mountain. Less art wank and more bucketloads of joy and sheer abandon. It’s all fucking mad and shitloads of fun. Don’t over intellectualise it – just fucking buy it already.
The End.
Best Wishes
Your friend Dave.
There are a couple of reasons why I was interested in buying this record. The first is that this made The Wire’s avant rock best of list for 2007. The second reason is due to an interesting review I read somewhere or other comparing Moha to a fusion of Lightning Bolt and Wolf Eyes. A comparison like that has even the poorest noise-nerd reaching for their wallets. But after listening to Norwegianism a couple of times I really don’t get the Wolf Eyes comparison. To my ears there is bucket loads of Lightning Bolt but it’s much more choppy and glitchy, almost John Wiese-like in places. I think Lightning Bolt mixed with Black Dice would have been a better description.
I know nothing about this band other than they are a guitar and drum duo from Norway. They make a pretty exceptional racket. The opening track is like free jazz Lightning Bolt. It’s obvious that there is a fair amount of improvisation going on, almost in the spirit of early Boredoms in places. When you think that this record was recorded in a single day and then consider just how hard and fast the drummer is hitting his kit it’s almost enough too make you want to lie down. This is a long way away from the transcendent white noise of Merzbow or the drone of Birchville. This is a great big, fun slice of improv-avant-rock music. If you were partial to John Wiese’s Soft Punk you may want to check this out. It’s not a record you can have on in the background it’s a record that demands (and I might add, deserves) attention.
Live at Bent Crayon Cleveland
Imagine every guilty-pleasure dumb-ass 1970’s heavy metal riff compiled on one record. Imagine those riffs being played by someone at the start of a week long crystal meth bender who picked up his bass rather than guitar and then think what that would sound like if the drummer was Animal from The Muppets. Ladies and gentlemen I give you Lightning Bolt. This record throbs so much it hurts.
Lightning Bolt are a two piece from Providence Rhode Island which initially started as an art school project. The music on Hypermagic Mountain is so overblown, so bloated, so gleefully ridiculous that these origins make a fair bit of sense. The only record I own that comes close to this is Comets on Fire’s Blue Cathedral. Both bands pay homage to the stupid yet strangely compelling monster riffs of the 1970’s. But whereas Blue Cathedral had me giggling in a bean bag, Hypermagic Mountain is chasing me around the room with an axe. Its a relentless record that demands attention. Look I’m a bit of a fan of using my ipod as a source of white noise. I do not do silence well and even at work I always have music playing. It helps me concentrate and I get everything I need to do done faster. Usually Sunn o))), Boris, Cramps, Yellow Swans and the Dead C get me in the zone. There are only two bands that I just can’t listen to at work. The first is Black Dice (all that hyperkinetic electro-fuckery) and the other is Lightning Bolt. Hypermagic Mountain is a record of such refined power that it makes me tense. It’s also a record that has illicted the two classic Doc quotes namely “woah, small doses, small doses” and “They have a focus, it’s narrow, and they do it well, but you just don’t really need much of it.”
I wholeheartedly agree. Hypermagic Mountain only get a spin every so often. I enjoy what they do but, fuck, I don’t need a lot of it.
<a 
Ducks Battle Satan 