It’s not everyday you encounter a band like Menimals, either in terms of visual or cerebral stimulus. Their high-brow descriptor intones of a band, “Experimenting the psychotropic properties of sound and exploring the power of the Elements in relation to the Platonic solids influenced by the Monomyth.” No less.

Further, that they comprise the following elements, “Doctor Forge , the TETRAHEDRON, the Man – Fire – Ancestral Voice. Rat, the HEXAHEDRON – Earth – tribal fury. Chimera, the ICOSAHEDRON – Water – low frequencies generator. Vulture, the OCTAHEDRON – Air – noise painting.” Wrapped up in the bow of, “The four elements/solids together create the DODECAHEDRON – the universe, the music.”

Bad Guys are “a midlander, a southerner, a Canadian and a Hungarian. Double necks, double kicks and no mic stand. Long hair, grey hair, bald-heads and beards. A shitload of rock. The works. Sounds like a plan. As well as playing with the likes of Circle and Oxes, these guys have earned a reputation for crashing all sorts of parties. They’ve played three ATPs, played on the plinth in Trafalgar Square, played Field Day, pissed off a lot of security, got a bunch of fines, and helped a lot of people have a lot of fun. Formed through a mutual desire to play some rock music that’s not had the life squeezed out of it by some kind of po-faced academic mangler, they make the heavy stuff and they play it loud, the way it should be.”

Sloath released their eponymous sold-out album in 2010 on Riot Season, with the promise of more to follow, soon…

The vagaries of life though, saw fit to enforce a 4 year wait for their shortly to be released follow-up album “Deep Mountain”.

Recently, thanks to Brett Savage of Dead Sea Apes, I was introduced to the sonic delight that is Haikai No Ku’s “Ultra High Dimensionality” – when I saw that sister-band Blown Out were about to release “Drifting Way Out Between Suns”, I knew I had to have more of that sound in my life.

My brain, what there is of it, paints pictures, usually cinematic approximations of what I hear, and in the case of Haikai No Ku and Blown Out, I am immediately, transcendentally conveyed to the Do Long Bridge scene in Apocalypse Now…

I was already a huge fan of Hendrix when I first saw the movie on video as a teenager, so the Hendrix inspired, Randy Hansen scored bridge scene remains indelibly seared onto my hippocampus.