Hypermagic Mountain

The band and their sound engineer, Dave Auchenbach, recorded the album in a house in Providence, Rhode Island directly onto a 2 track DAT master tape.[2] The album is a clear continuation of the sound they established on their previous albums, featuring a very dense sound composed almost entirely of distorted, often-processed bass guitar; loud, fast drums; and indiscernible vocals buried in the album's mix. The album's artwork was drawn by Brian Chippendale; the album's title was not decided until after the artwork was finished.[3]

Professional ratings

Aggregate scores
Source	Rating
Metacritic	88/100[4]
Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic	[5]
Alternative Press	5/5[6]
Blender	[7]
Entertainment Weekly	B[8]
Mojo	[9]
NME	9/10[10]
Pitchfork	7.3/10[11]
PopMatters	8/10[12]
Stylus Magazine	A−[13]
Uncut	[14]

Hypermagic Mountain was met with near-universal acclaim, with an average of 88 out of 100 based on 23 reviews on Metacritic.[4] The same site rates the album at number 145 on the all-time highest rated albums,[15] and as the fifth best album of 2005.[16] Stylus Magazine's Roque Strew hailed the album as "another stride toward the perfection of [Lightning Bolt's] prog-noise esthetic",[13] while Prefix Magazine's Aaron Richter called it Lightning Bolt's "most accomplished effort to date, one-upping 2003’s Wonderful Rainbow with a fresh sense of maturity."[17] Pitchfork's Brandon Stosuy similarly described Hypermagic Mountain as the band's "most well-oiled album", but criticized that "somewhere in the middle a lack of variety creates a dull patch."[11] Joe Martin, in CMJ New Music Monthly, said that the album's "craft-refinement has an exhilaration all of its own".[18]

• Brian Chippendale – drums and vocals
• Brian Gibson – bass guitar
• Dave Auchenbach – recording engineer

• Lightning Bolt official website
• Lightning Bolt at Load Records