Aminals – “Dead Air”
“Just let me know that you’re okay. Been hearing rumors, and if I know you I bet they’re true. I still like your outsides, so don’t let your insides rot away…All these stupid nervous ticks drive me fucking nuts. Stupid fucking shit only alcohol can calm…I swear I’m only miserable during the day…Just so you know I’m doing great. Got this great apartment, by this time next year I’ll be engaged. Just so you know I’m doing great. Got my dream job and my daddy still pays for everything.”- taken from “Ew, She Smells Like Brooklyn” from this album.
After a few drum hits the vocals come bleating in with as much intensity and force to peal paint off the walls and reupholster your sofa. This music is in your face metal with a grooving, tight rhythm section and some terrifically, tasteful drum accents, while vulture guitars lay a nest for screaming, hardcore vocals to grab you by your beak whilst the music hits you ’round the ears and then slams you headlong into the pavement. “I am not your fucking business.” Either way, with a song this powerful and potent and great- I’m sold.
Aminals is hardcore, metal, thrash by their terms- and they throw in some terms like metalcore and mathcore which I’m not as thrilled about. But this is metal that does what good metal does- merely, grabbing you by all vital organs, squeezing the living shit out of them, then throwing your mind straight through a seventh story window. And then you get up, feeling so much the better for it.
“Rope” starts off with some high-strung vocals pressed up to your face while a rhythm, that suggests “Ballroom Blitz” by The Sweet put into spasmodic overdrive, careens off into the far regions of space. There’s also some nice, twirly guitar licks that descend into the musical maelstrom. “My generation was born into failure/ A miscarriage promised to be broken down, I wasn’t born to be a statistic.” An effective, powerful song no matter how you add it up.
“Still can’t afford my vices, displaced moral enticements. I’ll keep writing this stupid shit if you’ll come back for more.” Sounds like my motto. This song is in your face, fire alarms being set off- disturbed, hysterical voices shouting down long corridors whilst mad, insanely great music plays. “A divine intervention, immaculate contractions. I’ll keep writing this stupid shit if you’ll come back for more.” This is not some of my stupid shit when I say how propulsive, exciting and great and how intense, creative and moving- this song is.
“Less People” explodes with dental drills pointed at your eyeballs, swerving cars spilling over outside your point of view, and volatile vocals erupting volcanic, venomous lava upon your nicely, pressed leisure pants. This song rips for your heart, rips for your guts and rips for your mind and does all successfully.
This song takes us down dark corridors of the mind and the inner city, spraying anger, frustration and disgust like musical graffiti at the walls of modern life. “I am the future…I’ll be the bible if you will just be my gun…we are the ghetto, crack houses and dirty coke…a human being something else.”
This song has dissonant, dislocated guitar licks whilst the rhythm spirals like a robot being driven slowly insane. “Ship our poor kids off to die. Just humans being something else.” How true, but the somber facts the song relays are offset by great music much like great rock’n’roll- like Eddie Cochran might play and he might say if he heard this “this is something else.”
“A quick fix of powders, a slow death will echo so much louder.”
This band made me think of animal crackers. All those funny, tasteless cookies shaped like elephants, lions and rhinoceros. It was not a tasty childhood treat, just made you feel good to be biting the head off of something you knew could easily bite your head off without a second thought. Don’t bite off more than you can chew!
But they also make me think of something that is powerful and driven. Like an animal working on instinct that knows no other way. Like a cougar set to leap on its prey.
But this an animal with intelligence and incisiveness, agile with wit. That portrays a world much maligned but also, with a passion and desire to see it through.
And this album has possibly the best lyrics I’ve heard all year. Along with some great metal/thrashing music with a hardcore heart.
In the law of the jungle this band rules.
Eat or be eaten.
(Slimedog)
