HIMALAYAS

After forming at school in 2015, things haven’t stopped getting bigger for the Cardiff quartet. Early single 'Thank God I’m Not You' became an instant hit, with almost 50 million streams to date, while 2023’s From Hell To Here debut album saw them heralded as one of the finest new rock bands in Britain.

High profile fans include fellow Welshmen Stereophonics, who invited them to play their Eden Sessions extravaganza, while Foo Fighters had them open their recent show at Cardiff’s Principality Stadium. Legendary AC/DC singer Brian Johnson liked them so much they’ve done a song together, 'V.O.V'.

Now they return with second album, BAD STAR. It’s a record that sees HIMALAYAS – Joe Williams (vocals/guitar), Mike Griffiths (guitar/vocals), Louis Heaps (bass) and James Goulbourn (drums) – expanding far beyond the indie-rock of their first works, taking in influence from Queens Of The Stone Age, Radiohead, Royal Blood and Foo Fighters.

“Over time, we've moved direction away from when we started – now we're an actual rock band,” says Joe. “There are songs on the first album that head in that direction, but on Bad Star we’re a solid, firm rock band and it’s obvious that's what we want to do.

“Our favourite bands are all huge rock bands, whether it's The Strokes or Jack White, or AC/DC, or Queens. Right now, I think rocks fans are re-embracing everything about that, they want something more classic.”

Working with producer Pete Hutchings, whose CV includes working with Royal Blood, Nothing But Thieves, Skindred and even Lady Gaga, this idea was understood implicitly. The sessions were completed analogue, capturing the band as they are with their instruments and no digital plugins, while also allowing their experimental impulses to bloom.

“We had a chat with a few producers, and they all went well, but with Pete we were just talking to him for an hour about music, and we all felt like we clicked,” says Mike. “He totally got it. He knew we wanted to be heavier and more of a rock band.”

“He was also super happy that we're an analogue band,” adds Louis. “We're in love with amps and pedals and going, ‘How do you make this sound?’ And he was super up for experimenting and chasing after ideas.”

This has resulted in 10 tracks that take in the confidence they’ve earned from their successes so far, with a sharp skill in inventive but catchy riffs, slinking rhythms, and an ever-present sense of vastness of both sound and vision.

It’s an album that twists and turns, never serving up the same thing twice, from the slow-burn of Pink Floyd-ish opener 'Beneath The Barrel', to the wall of exhilarating guitars on 'Hung Up', to 'Afterlife'’s cool, strutting, QOTSA-ish guitars, and the enormous, distortion-drenched riff of already-released single 'What If…?' The gasmasks and nuclear panic aesthetic of the song’s video, meanwhile, articulates the record’s central thread.

“The themes are based upon the disaster of men, the fact that we create our own problems a lot of the time,” says Joe. “Disaster happens, and that comes through in every facet of the album, whether that's a positive thing or negative thing.”

“We didn't go into writing it thinking we’d say this, but it turned out, Everything's f**ked,” says Mike. “That's how all the songs ended up going: Everything's f**ked.”

“We just wanted to make people feel more immersed in it, a little bit more included,” says James. “All these things, we wanted to give it an identity of its own.”

This takes a number of tacks through the album, some more hopeful than others. On 'Afterlife', Joe reflects on the promise of great things being just over the horizon, but always out of reach.

“Everyone prays for something better, or thinks there’s something better coming once you get past right now,” he explains. “I wanted to explore the idea that maybe there won't be something better than what we have currently, and embracing that.

“Before COVID, I was in a coma for a few days because I'm type one diabetic,” he continues. “I remember thinking it’d make me treasure life. It's taken me from then till now to be start to do that. But this is all amazing. What we're doing now is great.”

On Surrender, Mike says they’re talking about division. “It’s about partisanship and people not really being able to understand why people are on the other side,” he says. “Everyone does this, there's no willingness to have a dialogue. It's just: I'm right, you're wrong.”

'Nothing Higher', meanwhile, deals with the importance of finding a connection with other people. By contrast to what sits around it, which is “all pretty relentless and in your face”, Mike calls it the “prettiest” song on the album.

“Human connection is the pinnacle of what you can experience,” he says. “The song doesn't kick off with a bit of riff, it's just melodic. There's this nice build that adds something a little bit more hopeful in the context of the album. It makes you think, ‘Maybe there's a more to this than what we've been going on about the rest of the time.’”

It all adds up to a record that reaches for enormous heights, while also keeping a very human heart. BAD STAR is a record that dazzles with its ability to scale similar musical heights to Muse or Queens or Foos, fully embodying, as James puts it, “what a rock band should sound like without looking backwards”.

They’ve managed just that. Bad Star will send Himalayas supernova. Keep watching the skies…