Meet Cam's 'Acid Bath Slash'
Cam McCaul’s psychedelic new Slash was inspired by the album covers of a band whose name we won’t publish on our family-friendly website.
McCaul discovered them through Spotify’s algorithmically tailored playlists. He plays music while he works on bikes in his garage, and realized the same band kept perking his ears.
“Time after time, I’d check my phone and it would be this same band, with these wild album covers and crazy band name,” McCaul says. “Finally, I ended up downloading the albums, listening to them on my own time, and after staring at these album covers enough, I thought, ‘Well this would make a pretty killer paint scheme for a frame.'”
The result, a trippy new Slash:
To pull off the surreal, almost aquatic look, McCaul turned to Trek’s design and paint maestros Brian Lindstrom and Eric Heth. They came up with a swirling, celestial homage to the album covers, then painted the bike using a hydro-dip technique that involves submerging a frame into a patterned film and a vat of water. They nicknamed the bike the “Acid Bath Slash.”
“I wasn’t sure if Brian and Eric would be able to pull it off because it seems pretty ambitious. Neither of them flinched,” McCaul says.
Don't get lost in this paint.
Sweet details.
New band name: Acid Bath Slash.
He’d been looking forward to getting a Slash of his own ever since the bike’s most recent launch in September. “As soon as the video came out for the Slash with shots of R-Dog and Brandon [Semenuk] ripping, I’ve been jonesing to add one to the quiver. … It’s an enduro race bike, but it’s also, in my eyes, a full-blown freeride bike.”
Now, McCaul has a bike that looks as gnarly as the terrain it rides. He wants to take his Slash to the trails of Bellingham, Wash., for its first ride. He’s in for a hell of a trip.
