Bath power duo The Hysterical Injury sound like an unlikely combination of Big Business (drums & bass, innit) and the Blake Babies (the bass player is a chick). Their blend of noise rock heft and melodic frosting is surprisingly effective. They would maybe benefit from bigger amps, or perhaps a cannier sound man, but their focus is on tickling cochlears, with an inventive melody and shifting time signature sandwich, rather than kicking asses with a Big Naturals-style bass-rape. “Snow” is especially rad, sounding like Ride the Skies era Lightning Bolt meets early Stereolab. These lot are the kind of band that make it worth turning up early to shows. Their e.p. “Our Lives are a
Futuristic Nightmare” is worth a look too.

That Fucking Tank are the flip side to tonight’s Lightning Bolt support band coin. Whereas The Hysterical Injury take an obvious Bolt influence and chuck in some disparate elements to create something new, Tank take the bolt format and sound and reproduce it, only shittier. The local hipsters lap it up, but they sound like a couple of teenagers playing Primus b-sides to me. Lame.

It’s pretty pointless reviewing a Lightning Bolt show. They always rule, so why bother? Perhaps the set list was a bit lacking compared to other times I’ve seen them, as all but the closing “Dracula Mountain” are from new album “Earthly Delights”, which in my opinion is the weakest of their efforts to date. However, even the weakest Lighting Bolt set is still likely to be infinitely more awesome than pretty much watching any other living band. Suffice to say tonight they continued to rule.