Animosity - "Animal"

Animosity - You Can't Win (Metal Blade/Blackmarket Activities 2007)

Animosity - Animal / Metal Blade/Blackmarket Activities

In my last review (Severe Torture's Sworn Vengeance), as well as my Death Breath review, I made mention of how recording technology has negatively affected metal's sound over the past 10 years or so. First, drum triggers (devices used to process the actual sound of a drum through a computer into whatever sound you want) made it easier for drummers to play fast and accurately without trying as hard. Speed was limited when drummers actually had to hit hard in order for a microphone to pick up their sound. Now, even the slightest tap can be a thundering boom. Channel that mechanized sound into Pro-Tools and everything else falls into line, digitally. When albums are recorded like this, the sweat that goes into playing a type of music as demanding as death metal is marginalized. While this overly sterile approach doesn't really work for a number of bands, there are a few groups with a mechanized, relentless style that work well within a precise, overly accurate recording. One of these bands is San Francisco's Animosity.

Their 2003 Tribunal Records debut, Shut It Down was a decent-enough deathcore romp, made slightly more impressive by the fact that their average age was reported to be 16 at the time. 2005's Empires on Metal Blade/Blackmarket Activities was unlike anything else that came out that year. I must have listened to that album hundreds of times. Clocking in at only 27 minutes, the nine songs on Empires were short—but not concise—blasts of hardcore-laced death metal with a host of aggressive and complex twists. Riffs spiraled and changed without warning, about a hundred per song, but the songs retained a sense of direction rather than just randomly ending up at a huge breakdown for no reason other than to end the song. After that flurry of an album, my interest was piqued.

October 2007 brings us the follow-up album, Animal. Recorded with Kurt Ballou at his Godcity Studios, the production is a nice mix of Ballou's chaotic style (Converge, The Power & the Glory) and Animosity's accuracy, which adds just enough edge to make Empires sound as if it were recorded in an operating room. Sonically, everything is in place, but sounds as if it had to rush to get there . . . like all of the instruments are a little out of breath. Animosity's exactitude needs this style of recording, though . . . with so much happening, a sloppy recording wouldn't do their chops justice.

My initial complaint with Empires was that the drums were actually too busy for what the guitars, bass, and vocalist were doing. It's hard to imagine an overly-technical band having a drummer that's too busy, but when Animosity decide to ride out a riff for a few seconds (which seems like an eternity after you've been pummeled mercilessly for a few minutes) drummer Navene Koperwies needed to show restraint. This is a trait he seems to have found within himself for the recording of Animal, holding back more when the riff doesn't demand him to be flashy.

Again, the songs range from about two minutes to the album-closer "A Passionate Journey," which ends up at just over four minutes after an extended drum outro. Overall, Animal's songs end up in the two-and-a-half minute mark, which is just enough when there's a million things happening at once. It's impossible to describe an average Animosity song, but there's more changes than you can shake a stick at, and how they're able to explain song structure to one another during the writing process is beyond me. It's pure insanity with a running time similar to that of Empires, this Animal ceasing to exist at the 28-minute mark.

One other reason why fans of intense, unrelenting music should pick this up is for the vocals of Leo Miller. His defeatist, anti-war attitude comes across loud and clear in the lyrics on Animal ("I look ahead on our path / and all I see is fucking doom / plunder and rape"), but it's the way he's able to bob and weave his vocal patterns in and out of the band's ridiculous complexity is unbelievable. Musical accents match vocal accents; pauses come at just the right time . . . the pacing is just excellent. Some lyrics feel crammed into place, but that just comes with the tech territory. Most of the time, Miller succeeds in getting a lot of words in a very small spot. Vocal arrangement are often overlooked in metal, but the only way you're going to really get a feel for how amazingly difficult this can be is to get the album and literally follow along with the lyrics. It's a lost art, that lyric reading , but totally worth it on Animal.

The prowess these youngsters display on only their third album is extraordinary. Basically, if you can't handle the heat, you're going to need to get out of the kitchen, because Animosity crank the heat way up on this record. Chances are, this album is going to whiz by in what seems like a lot less than its 28-minute running time, which makes Animal a perfect contender for repeat listens, almost daring you to try and absorb everything presented on this disc without becoming overwhelmed in the process.