Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7.5/10

The rivalry between the two leading cities of the North-West doesn’t just limit itself to the battles that take place between the four combined sides battling it out for Premiership supremacy, it extends back through recent history in its struggle to been to seen as the second city of the country, the powerhouses of commerce and in its music.

The football is all well and good however, on recent form Manchester shades it, especially with the re-emergence of the only team to actually play their home games in Manchester, but the music and its dominance on the local cultural landscape; that surely has to be down as a thrashing handed out by the city that straddles the Mersey.

Both cities have their appealing natures though and it is no wonder that Leeds based band These Minds decided rather proactively to play both musical hubs on the same day, when in Rome, why not play Naples on the same day after all?

It does lead to a lull though in the proceedings of one but thankfully a lull that was soon filled with an energy so visible that it’s surprising a spokesperson from one of the big six energy firms wasn’t on hand to give a statement about misplaced consumption. For These Minds are all about that spark, that explosion of ferocity which sits in the ethos and righteous path of Fury Fest, a spark igniting a volcanic eruption that only needs the right amount of magma to flow in a slightly different direction and it would make Krakatau seem like the sound of ice cream gently dropping on to grass.

Armed with two as yet unnamed new songs in the set list, These Minds ploughed with diligence and youthful wrath across their allotted time and tracks such as Break My Back, the deliberately evocative Mantle, Want and Figure Out all played their part of introducing this Yorkshire band into the minds of music lovers in the powerhouses of the North-West, the rivals in everything except in their furrowed browed expression at the Westminster Empire.

For These Minds are something to take in, something with that extra bit of energy that bounds along like a rhino armed with a shotgun scenting a poacher to hang above his fireplace. A none so subtle, but certainly entertaining introduction to the Leeds based band.

Ian D. Hall