That’s V, as in the Latin sense. We’re talking Roman numerals rather than aliens, my friends. It’s the blues-rockers’ fifth album, you see. However, rumours of Cactus’s demise appeared more well-founded than exaggerated, given that V’s predecessor ‘Ot ‘N’ Sweaty, we’ll conveniently forget 1973’s Son Of Cactus which the band themselves disown seeing as it featured precisely zilch founding members, came out 34 years ago.

Yet a millennium later, Cactus are back, back, you get the picture. This time, there’s three out of four original bandmates on board. There’s bassist Tim Bogert, who according to one fan, at least, possesses “the ability to make fretboard insanity sound amazing”, Carmine Appice on drums, and guitarist Jim McCarty.

Original vocalist Rusty Day sadly passed away in March 1982, the victim of a drug deal gone awry. His place goes to Brit Jimmy Kunes, formerly of Savoy Brown. Given the fact Day was once lined up to replace Bon Scott as AC/DC front man, it seems right that Kunes rasps like Day, Scott and eventual AC/DC successor Brian Johnson combined – a rough-and-ready approach that perfectly suits the raunchy playing of Appice, Bogert, and McCarty.

Cactus came into being when Appice and Bogert, then rhythm section with the psychedelic Vanilla Fudge became disillusioned with the other band members, and set out to form a supergroup in the vein of Cream or Led Zeppelin with Jeff Beck on guitar and Rod Stewart on vocals. Beck, though, became sidelined for 18 months recovering from a near-fatal car accident and Stewart chose to join the Faces instead. So, the duo turned to Jim McCarty who they discovered playing with The Buddy Miles Express and Mitch Day who had been fronting Ted Nugent’s The Amboy Dukes.

According to Appice, the “Cactus sound”, as illustrated on manifesto track ‘Cactus Music’, is a “raw kind of basic sound. It’s not over-produced, and there’s a lot of energy.” It follows on naturally enough that Cactus, proving the old maxim wrong, do make them like they used to. V for Victory, indeed.
(4/5)