Of course, volume—and lots of it—is crucial to Lightning Bolt.

“For what we are doing, it’s really important [to be loud],” Gibson said. “The way we are doing it, the effect we are trying to have as a band. Volume is really good for us.”

Concentrated, constant volume often translates into one type of emotion: anger—or extreme excitement. Lightning Bolt, however, manage to evoke all kinds of musical landscapes within their relentless noise. Hints of sadness and wonder break through the abstraction.

“Brian is discovering melodic things that have more feeling than just a bombardment of noise. But there is an overwhelming triumphant feeling. I feel like we are mainly joyful. Sometimes the joy gets like ‘What the hell is going on?’ But it’s just a happiness in what we are doing, a joy of playing,” Chippendale said.

Somehow, the rough T.T.’s crowd never turned violent. Three minutes into “Dracula Mountain,” the song became an increasingly fast jig—suitable for a bar mitzvah—and had the entire audience clapping to the beat, a rare and electrifying feat for a rock concert.

When it ended, Lightning Bolt seemed to vanish. The noise was gone and the magic disappeared as the audience lost its collective power. The quiet after the storm was alarming.

—Staff writer Sarah L. Solorzano can be reached at solorzan@fas.harvard.edu.