Wonderful Rainbow

Wonderful Rainbow delivers what Ride the Skies most lacked: Musical diversity.

The music is purposeful and powerful. [Jul 2003, p.114]

Stellar noise pollution. [May 2003, p.99]

For an album that changes pace only for intensely noisy noodling, Wonderful Rainbow shows remarkable range.

Wonderful Rainbow is a brilliant record and has upped the ante tremendously for Lightning Bolt. They managed to take every single aspect that made Ride the Skies such a great record and intensify it severely, all the while showcasing incredibly tight and complex musicianship – knowing when to hold in the reins and when to set them on fire.

If Lightning Bolt works best live, Wonderful Rainbow loses nothing of the duo's spontaneous wallop. [#230, p.56]

If the White Stripes gave up blues-rock for steroids, acid and death metal, they might sound something like this. [Apr 2003, p.124]

The net result is an amazing pileup of discount psychedelia and stoner rock grind, with ample doses of ecstatic amplifier brutality thrown in to explode any ham-fisted accusations of classic rock necrophilia.

Too mischievous for Led Zeppelin's Valhalla and too self-aware for Bal-Sagoth's Magic Kingdom, Wonderful Rainbow conjures retarded unicorns, copulating robots, and head-banging ogres in one technicolor beat.

Perhaps the album's most remarkable feat is its utter lack of density: One never gets the sense that anything excessive or unnecessary was utilized in constructing its sonic brickworks.