Animosity "Animal" (Black Market Activities)
By Cameron Higby-Naquin
Thursday. Jan 24, 3:35 PM
Capable, but not fully desiring to go beyond confines.

Bands who seek to carve out a unique niche for themselves within an already niche genre like metal or grindcore must walk a fine line. On one side, they don't want to sound like every other band out there, but on the other, they don't want their sound to alienate established fans. Animosity, a Californian death metal band (though I've seen them described as "deathcore"), often errs on the latter side of the line. It is evident that they're a creative bunch, but too often on Animal they seem to be suppressing that creativity in favor of the same sort of thing we've heard before innumerable times on innumerable other death metal records.

Here is an example. The second-to-last track on Animal consists of a 30-second drum explosion amid a rain of wailing and echoing metal and shouts layered upon spoken words layered upon whispers. The effect is no less intense than anything else on the album, and is even a bit shocking for its lack of guitar chugging, and nowhere else does the band do anything else like this. Yet this was to me the most interesting thing that happened on the whole album, which is otherwise a fairly standard sounding bit of furious guitars, technically adept drums, and beastly – animalesque, perhaps – growling. The band is wholly capable of taking their sound beyond what's expected of them, but doesn't seem to fully desire it.

There are other indicators of Animosity's latent creativity. "A Passionate Journey" ends the album with a slow fade out beneath a soaring guitar solo. On "Terrorstorm," there's what sounds like a Gregorian chant for about half a second. Why not carry this theme further? I realize that the more of these non-deathy elements a band incorporates into their sound, the less credibility they'll receive from die-hard fans, but to me putting one's own brand onto the genre is the challenge of making music.
www.animositysf.com
www.blackmarketactivities.com

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Cameron Higby-Naquin

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