Let me just jump right into this one. I got Animosity's Animal a little while back... well, it bit more than a while and I listened and listened and listened to this album with ferocity that I normally wouldn't apply to any normal album. Why you ask? Well, simply put, I didn't know if I liked it or disliked it. See, usually the thing I do with an album I get and can't decide on is to put it away for a while (say 2-3 weeks) then come back to it and give it a chance again. Now I did this with Animal (a few times) and I couldn't come to a conclusion. This was solved simply by one thing: seeing the band live.Yes, I somehow managed to see this band live. When? Well let me lay this down for you: Grand Rapids, MI, is lucky enough to have a small yet popular venue that isn't some ass-faced-bitch of a corporate-whored-out slut of a venue called Skelletones*. Somewhere in the cosmos, luck decided to smile upon Skelletones by bringing four amazing bands one night: Dissonant (a local thrash metal band), Braindrill (f**king insane), Animosity, and The Black Dahila Murder (death metalcore). Yes. All of them under one roof. Now, as awesome as Dissonant was and how literally f**king insane and amazing Braindrill was, and how expectedly incredible The Black Dahlia Murder was, we're here to talk about Animosity.
As Braindrill had blown my mind, I had to pick up the pieces of my skull and brain that were splattered around the venue. This gave me time to collect myself (holy sh*t that pun is awesome) and prepare for Animosity. As the band set up, the kids (literally, 14-17 year olds) that had gone out for a smoke or to get some air filed back into Skelletones packing it three-quarters full. When the band began, with the first track off of Animal, "Terrorstorm," the crowd went wild. The metalheads and hardcore kids began to punch and kick and dance all around. Animosity trucked through the first few songs, then stopped to explain how cool they were, then started up again with a few more songs.
This is when I started to think about my dilemma. Why don't I like/dislike this band/album? Live, it sounded good and was good to bang your head to, but when I sit down and listen to the album (as I am doing right now) I think "meh, this is just not as good as I want it to be." So, to come to a complete drawing of the lines I'll say this: Animosity has huge amounts of talent and the music overall is well written, but all in all it's not for me. Not at all. I enjoy the vocals and the blast beats, but for me I feel like the album has too much going on. Too much for me to want to listen to over and over. I'm not sure who'd I recommend this to or if I'd even recommend it. The live show was phenomenal but it could have been the crowds everlasting love for Animosity that had me pumped for this band when I saw them and not so much the music. So I'll finish this up saying this: try this album out. It really could be for you. It's not bad music, it just doesn't fit me well, and like a size 3 shoe it's not ever going to fit me.