Anims
God is a Witness

One cannot really blame Anims for taking the time of putting a mind-boggling artwork on the front of their debut album God is a Witness. Of course, artwork isn’t the most important thing, the music, the sound, the feeling of listening is that – but the artwork is often what peaks the first interest, and there isn’t much there when I look at God is a Witness. God thing for Anims that I select at random, otherwise I would have never listened to them – or is it a good thing? After all, I might just as well hate them.

It is an album on the Sneakout Records label, the one Burning Minds Group use to sneakout their new prospects, their hopeful debutants so to speak. Some stuff I have heard on this label is quite great, but there’s also quite a bit of really uninteresting stuff, so what about Anims? A female fronted band, that is usually a good thing as female voices are still in a minority despite being a lot more common nowadays. And I think Elle that sings for Anims has a pretty good voice, strong rock voice in the vein of singers like Pat Benatar, Joan Jett and other strong female voices. Perhaps not as characteristic but can deliver the songs well enough.

The style is quite archetypical hardrock, think of bands like Heart, Pat Benatar, or whatever else classic female fronted you can think of. It doesn’t strike me as the most innovative album I have ever listened to, and I suspect that it wasn’t the plan either. Still, you need to do something that feels original, fresh, new, or something like that if you want to be noticed – otherwise you can just as well do covers, why create new material that is the same as the old? And that is a bit of what I think when I listen to Anims, I don’t hear anything that adds anything.

I was thinking a bit about things like these lately when I have been downed with a high fever and stuff, and that how I usually listen to the albums I find defined a band rather than their actual best albums. To name an example like Iron Maiden, they stopped being interesting in the eighties for the most part – the albums I can listen to is from that era, there past 2000-albums may be objectively better but they don’t add anything and are hence much less interesting. That is true for so much music, and I think the problem for someone like myself that listen to so many albums it becomes a reality over the whole stage, and I would say that a big majority of the metal and rock I hear is dead boring – this is one more example of this. God is a Witness is a decent album in any measurable view, the songs are fine, the production as well, vocals, whatever, but what is new? Nothing, so why should we want to listen to this when the albums that defined this style is already out there? and they are more exciting as they aren’t derivative.

With that said, it is hard to go too wrong with this album, it is fine.

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