EP's or Extended Plays as they are known as are often a good way to get the word out about yourselves as a new band to the general public to see if you gain any interest to write more songs to record and release a full length album. Normally EP's are very short for those reasons and the results will of course vary depending on the band, the type of music they play and the people who listen. I've reviewed a few EP's so far and they've been quite good and some have been the debut releases from bands and I look forward to the full length debut albums they will eventually record and release.

Today I will be concentrating on an EP from a new Scottish band called IN SEARCH OF SANITY who have their first release out called "Two Stops Past Barking" which is a short 5 song EP roughly totalling a 25 minute playtime. This quarter of Rockers formed in Glasgow in 2008 and have gone through a few different name changes before eventually sticking with the name they use now.

Over time, ideas have been forming in the minds of the musicians involved but due to several conflicts and line-up alterations since formation, a release was never actually made possible until last year when the original line-up resolved their differences and got together in a studio to record their debut EP called "Two Stops Past Barking" which took only two days to record which if you ask me is very impressive.

So was it a rushed job or not? Well when you bear in mind that the ideas were already there in their minds, you can probably guess that getting those ideas down onto an instrument and a computer won't take that long and you'd be right but if you rush something, you could probably run the risk of ruining the quality and making it sound bad and something that should have had more time put into it.

So is that the case here? For an EP that was only recorded in just two days, this is far from a bad rush job. It may have been recorded super quickly but it sounds very professional in terms of the quality. It starts off with the opening track which is a hard Rocker called "The Insanitrain (Two Stops to Madness)" which sounds like a title that would appear on an album by a band like IRON MAIDEN which just happens to be one of the bands influences and it does sound very cool and you can indeed pick up those influences in this track.

Next up things get very funky for the track "Sexy Little Lady" which may be a slow paced groovy Rock track but it sure as hell ain't boring and it's the type of track you could slow dance to at your wedding reception. For the next track "B.A.W.S. pt. 1" which is the first in an acoustic ballad trilogy of songs, things are stripped down to sound like an acoustic style track and it does indeed sound like an acoustic style track despite the usage of an electric guitar in there but then I have heard acoustic songs with electric guitars in there and those sound cool and you know, this one does too.

We get back to the harder Rock songs with the EP's second to last track "Cry Cry Baby" which is a bit slower paced then the opening track but it's still a cool song to listen to. With the EP's closing track "Sweet Lady", you get some groovy riffs at the start which remind you of classic Rock bands like AEROSMITH and their song "Pandora's Box".

So what do we have here overall? I like all of this EP's tracks and there's not one I don't hate as there is a good blend of different Rock styles as explained in this review and I look forward to when IN SEARCH OF SANITY release more material but in the meantime, we have their excellent debut EP "Two Stops Past Barking" to tie us over until then.