The indomitable elements were against Lightning Bolt Thursday night. The calendar date being July 8, and the geographic location being New Orleans, gig goers were insured a bath in the sweat pouring from their own person, and the person pressed up against them.

 Then there was the room itself. Every whir cast into the cavernous room on Oretha Castle Haley Blvd. that now houses the Zeigeist Center was sent screaming pong-like off the walls and ceiling. Even for a band billed as the loudest around, the cacophony almost proved too overpowering; the equilibrium of Brian Gibson’s buzzsaw bass and Brian Chippendale’s cephalopodan drumming put at risk by the extended shimmer of a cymbal crash, or the prolonged gurgle of what would normally be a crackling pluck.

But as the grinning cartoon face etched into the band’s Marshall stack seemed to defiantly signal, Lightning Bolt prevailed in murky conditions. They delivered the kind of set that makes you want to burn down the concert space and run through the streets naked afterward, yelling wordless noises into the empty streets. And who really expected they wouldn’t? After all, this is a duo that willfully ignores stages and sets up on the floor, throwing itself in the middle of the sloppy melee of not-quite punks that inevitably ensues each time Chippendale kicks into one of his warp speed, thrashing, time signature-hopping beats. It’s a band that used to set up in Providence, R.I., alleyways and advertise their performances only by word of mouth. They don’t need to be comfortable. By the look of the mutilated ski mask that held Chippendale’s microphone, they didn’t seem to know what comfort was.

Lightning Bolt’s set was both imprisoning and liberating. Never was I so conscious that I  was trapped in a body with ears that can only tolerate so much noise, that was only capable of handling so much stimulation at once. At the outer boundaries of those limits is exactly where the duo sought to ensnare the big crowd. As the set aped on and this writer’s ears seemed to detach from his body and float away, the entire room seemed to be enmeshed in a tractor beam emanating from the bass drum of Chippendale’s kit. At first glance, the mass of gyrating flesh and flopping, ratty hair in front of the stage appeared to be a conventional testosterone-saturated mosh pit. But after fighting to the front to get a glimpse of the man in action, it became evident that the sole cause of the scrum was Chippendale’s seemingly stream-of-conscious beat patterns. He achieved the rare feat of looking simultaneously underfed and powerful as a battering ram. (That’s somewhere in the range of a rabid pitbull, for those keeping score at home). With the aforementioned ski mask rendered for this show as an irate bunny on acid, each snare shot seemed to be causing the cosmos to vibrate at the feet of a bunch of manic kids who can usually be viewed around town trying their darndest to pretend that nothing can affect them. On the opposite side of the stage, Gibson was plodding the course through Chippendale’s torrent, standing motionless. In front of him, there was space to graze cattle.

(Well-earned) Mystique aside, the band’s musical wizardry was the transport module for the magical voyage. The contrasts inherent in their sound are unending. It’s the best Nintendo soundtrack Cannibal Corpse never scored. Their licks are hugely indebted to their influences (Boredoms, no wave, Slayer), but sound like they were pulled from the wreckage of an alternative rock history pileup, rather than dug up lovingly and shined for the display case. Their structures and progressions could be considered hypnotic, as long as Yoko Ono was swinging the watch. And, in general, the whole thing just sounds like two guys making a racket, until the whole mess resolves and, somehow, it’s what you might call a memorable song.

For the set’s last number, Chippendale shed the ski mask and the two pounded out a white fury of a jam that was equal parts fantasy metal and John Cage. After a short, droning buildup, the two worked themselves up to the finale -- a soaring, triumphant breakdown that must have been full of major chords (or maybe they were just the most major chords strung together all night). As the big climax hit in the middle of the sea of bodies close to the band, a tattooed twentysomething flew through the air and landed flat on the ground. She looked woozy and perhaps unconscious. Someone picked her up and carried her off, and everyone standing around me wondered what happened. We looked back toward the band, just in time for them to finish.

Drenched in sweat and looking handled, most of the crowd filtered out. One guy lingered for a minute, chanting.

“Light-ning Bolt! Holy shit!”