Review: Mienakunaru ‘Blood Sun’

The latest work from esteemed psych lord Mike Vest, along with collaboraters Dave Sneddon and Junzo Suzuki is Mienakunaru‘s new release and follow up to their vaunted debut Lost Bones Of The Holy Butterfly, Blood Sun. Out now through Cardinal Fuzz and Feeding Tube Records, this looks to be another odyssey of hypnotic, fuzzed-out psyche doom.

When you open an album with the title track that stretches over twenty minutes, you’ve got to have a lot of confidence in your ability to deliver. Fortunately, Blood Sun is an earth-shaking, hypnotic trip through ochre skies, dusted with purple clouds above a sand scorched prairie. Evocative, psychedelic soloing moves in and out of view, like a wind swirling throughout this sonic odyssey. What I like about this track is that it isn’t just a lazy, ‘repeat epic doom riff ad naseum for twenty minutes’ like some bands would do. Blood Sun feels like it’s alive, and crackling with a narrative electricity that begs to be revealed. Mystery abounds within distortion drenched guitar work, all the while a throbbing bass walks this dusty desert alone. And that is JUST the opener.

distortion drenched guitar work, all the while a throbbing bass walks this dusty desert alone…

When we get to All Too Real, maybe your brain is a little too frazzled and we need to slow it down a little more, with a slow soulful bass groove and guitar lapping like fuzzy waves upon a shore. The way the guitar lines draw up and shudder is glorious, vibrating in the shimmering air. Invisible Hammerblow has a little more oomph to the low end, as waves of squalling guitar streaks across the top of it, while closer Red Flesh has my favourite repeating bass line in the whole record, maintaining that bluesy groundwork for the reeling, psychedelic freakouts spiralling overhead.

I’d like to shy away from cliches about cosmic jams, hypnotic stoner psychedelia, and the like, but I realise while listening to Mienakunaru that there isn’t anything wrong with cliches when it is executed like this. Blood Sun may sound EXACTLY as you’d expect when you hear those words, but it doesn’t make it any less enthralling, absorbing and so goddamn trance-inducing. Now if you’ll excuse me, I got some cosmic jams to sink into, man…

Label: Cardinal Fuzz Records | Feeding Tube Records
Band Links: Facebook

Scribed by: Sandy Williamson