Science fiction is a pretty common recurring theme among the bands we’ve added to the Weird List over the years. There’s no better way to announce your weirdness than by declaring you’re from another planet, or that you draw your musical inspiration from all those times you were abducted and anally probed by little green men. So what makes Slimey Things — Sydney, Australia’s self-proclaimed “premier sci-fi rock band” — stand out from every other sci-fi band on our little blue rock? It’s simple: Their music rocks.
Slimey Things list Frank Zappa, Cardiacs and Swedish prog-metal maniacs Meshuggah among their influences, and you can definitely hear all of that in their delightfully spastic sound. Here, for example, is “Spacetoast,” which is exactly what its title promises — an ode to toast from outer space. All hail the toast!
And are here they are celebrating the miracle of modern technology that is “Uberporn.” Is “uberporn” a thing that exists yet? If it is, I humbly thank you for taking time out from your busy uberporn schedule to read this blog post.
Slimey Things got their start in 2001 and sadly were called back to their home planet of Thaldor in 2016, when they released their final album, Goodbye Earth. But the band’s main instigator, Nick Soole, stayed here in Earth — in fact, he now lives right here in Los Angeles, where he’s a TV, film and videogame composer. Which I’m sure is a far more lucrative enterprise than making weird sci-fi rock.
I’ll leave you with Slimey Things’ catchiest track, which also doubles as a cautionary tale for our increasingly dystopian times: “Made by Robots for Robots.” No wonder Slimey Things left Earth for Thaldor and/or Los Angeles.
P.S. Thanks to reader Paul for indoctrinating us into the ways of Slimey Things!
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