It's madness, but you want - nay, need - it to consume you wholly. Lightning Bolt no longer trade in any other currency; their dollar bills are stained neon and purple, psychedelic and royal, thoroughly twisted and yet, at their core, just another lofty part of the establishment.

Album number four from the Rhode Island-spawned fuck-rock reprobates picks up the mangled magic of their Wonderful Rainbow opus - skull-crunkingly good shit that _should already be residing on your record shelves - and shifts the gears into hyperspeed (appropriately enough). This is faster, leaner, bigger, better: Lightning Bolt, 2005 edition do not fuck about. The proof is here in the very first track - '2 Morro Morro Land' explodes like a twenty megaton device lodged in your cerebellum, all drum'n'bass'n'fuckin' punk'n'roll'n'shit spread over the inside of your cranium. Vocals are as pointlessly garbled as ever, serving only to propel the songs faster and faster and faster into the psyche, while Brian Chippendale's drum-smacking prowess has gone from astute to abso-fucking-lutely insane.

Critical assessments elsewhere have stressed that _Hypermagic Mountain_ is the pair's most accessible release to date, and that in 'Captain Caveman' they have a song conforming to conventional rock 'n' roll structures. These ears don't hear it: this is rock 'n' ROFL, to slip into accepted text slang. You will roll on the floor, although only because your legs will give way under the incessant force just three songs in. By the time you hit the centerpiece, 'Magic Mountain', your insides are likely to be on the floor before you. As for laughing, how can you not? Lightning Bolt's success beyond basement-level indiedom is the funniest shit since Dan the Automator's friendship with Jamie Cullum.

Zero subtlety, zero bullshit: Lightning Bolt have delivered what you knew they would, a record that both ups the ante and liquidises it, spreading its gooey goodness all over their sweaty faces. It's madness that you don't let simply consume you, you allow it to destroy you. Dance 'til you almost die first, though, won't you?

A concluding moment of calmness, if you will: should the current tangent be maintained, the duo's next record could undo the very seams of the world. Then there'd be no establishment, no perceived scene royalty, and no madness to infest itself within anyone or anything; just endless noise.