ANIMALS

I find myself listening to this remarkable disc quite a lot lately, despite the fact that when it was first released I found it to be rather bleak (of course, things would only get more depressing as Roger Waters took the helm for mega-hit "The Wall," and the suicide-inducing "The Final Cut"). Now, however, I find the album's message that the world is largely composed of mindless "Sheep" who are preyed upon by "Pigs" (politicians, priests, and the "giants of industry,") as well as "Dogs" (generals?) to ring timely and true.

Lyrical content aside, I especially enjoy the delightful little ditty that is "Pigs on the Wing" (both parts), and I am blown away by the awesome power of the guitar on my favourite track, "Sheep," where Gilmore makes his six-string swoop down like an attacking jet-fighter.

This is definitely one of the best Floyd albums! Put on "Sheep," CRANK IT UP, and see if you don't agree!

Uh oh! This is the second time that Peter Rideout and I agree completely! The concept of this album is as timely now - if not moreso - than it was in 1977. The separation of society into "Pigs" (corporate fat-cats and politicians who "control" everything), "Dogs" (money-obsessed financial types and mid-level managers who do the Pigs' biddings), and "Sheep" (the populace (blue-collar, white-collar, labor) that simply "goes along" with all of it, rarely showing the courage to attempt to change the system) is almost beyond brilliant. And the lyrics reflect that brilliance. But, as Peter notes, it is the music that gives this album its "edge." Gilmour's best work (with the possible exception of The Wall), and Wright's and Mason's best work, all ably "orchestrated" by Waters into a flawless whole. Noe of the most "beautiful" works in prog-rock.

Unhuman Animals Or Abnormally Human ??

If Dark Side and Wish You were both concept albums (or at least were more or less built as), Animals was not, at least in the first stages. As with a few of their album's material, Floyd often, previewed the up-coming "songs" on stage, to see if they worked well, but in the case of two of Animals' five tracks (but representing almost 2/3 of the album's length), Dogs and Sheep existed for quite a while (I think sice 74) and were thought originally to be part of WYWH, but were then left aside for a latter use. Indeed Raving And Drooling (future Sheep) and You Gotta Be Crazy (future Dogs) attack subjects already touched in WYWH, although from a different angle: manipulation and exploitation of blind followers (Sheep), familiar to Machine and Cigar, no? So Floyd (well mostly Waters) turned these two tracks into a new concept based on Orwell's Animal Farm and this in turn evolved into one of the most stunning album gatefold artwork ever with the rundown Battersea Power Station and the infanous flying pig (taking a unplanned ride over London's skies, provoking chaos with airplane corridors) and again designing the own specific disc centre labels. Roger wrote Pigs and the small book-ending intro and outro Pigs On The Wing accordingly to the album's newly found direction.

Past the forgettable Pigs On The Wing intro, where Waters strips the acoustic guitar from Gilmour, this album can be seen as the first step to the Watersization of Floyd's musical direction, but it still quite a group effort. If Water's lyrics had become one of Floyd's major strength since Meddle, here they climb another step in importance in their music, since not only very meaningful and thoughtful (debatable from the auditor's own political stance), but also in the quantity. Never have Floyd tracks been so wordy before, ever since the Syd days. Indeed Water's almost extreme-leftist stance on this album, when these guys were seen as multimillionaires (not really the case since they had built their private Britannia Row studios and made bad investments) might even shock and the critics had a field day describing them as either simplistic or demagogic and opportunistic (Waters takes a few swipe at the horrible "old hag" Maggie, then leader of the conservateur opposition and moral order defender Mary Whitehouse), but in the face of the "rock'n roll spirit" guardians of the faith/dogma establishment, this was another no-no, after the long tracks.

The almost sidelong epic of Dogs is definitely the album's centrepiece and yet another proof of how Gilmour and Waters where the Lennon-McCartney of the 70's, pulling a stunning collaboration, where Wright's superb keyboard arrangements is the icing on the cake - returning to his Farsifa organ and Rhodes rather than the synth of the previous two albums. Gilmour's guitar shines all the way through the album, but Water's lyrics (all sung by him on this album) are extremely "on the dot" (he considers himself part of that caste), thus making Dogs the most popular track on this album. Pigs is really bitter and angry, but (to me appears) to be written quickly, even if the middle sections (with the pig grunts and outstanding Gimourian guitar effects) is an excellent diversion from the weaker verse-chorus parts. Then comes my personal fave Sheep, a drama-filled pro-Marxist and anti-clergy ditty. One's got to love the mass' slowly deteriorating litany into revolt, before the track breaks out in the open and full freedom. Sonically speaking, The Wall's Run Like Hell is also very reminiscent of Animals' general soundscapes. Little surprise that after such bleak picture painted, Roger book-ended the three tracks with a glimmer of hope Pigs On The Wing ditty. The often-superb instrumental passages provide a much-needed breath of fresh air to lighten the heavy and weighty lyrical content

This semi commercial failure (everything being relative on that Floyd scale) of Animals is probably due to exterior factors: the punk outburst and prog decadence (the long tracks in the eyes of a new generation), the dark sombre (almost depressive) feel, the political message (and sort of punkier than punk), but past the Tatcher/Whithouse jabs, isn't this album's lyrical content ever more to date than today??? Animals is also often seen by fans as the moment where Waters' future take-over of Floyd took roots, although that might seem unfair as well when we know that both Gilmour and Wright will release (very) good solo albums the following year, their stuff simply not fitting the Animals mould. Another "bad" point often cited by detractors is that the album is almost entirely sung by Waters, and one doesn't hear much the voice of Gilmour (just on Dogs' first part) and Wright not at all. Unfortunately if this album is often overlooked by fans and the general public, but also by the group itself, as past its promotional tour, none of its "songs" will be ever played by the group (even stranger when you know two of its tracks were regular part of their show prior to the album's release), even if the flying pig will still be used for the shows. The most difficult of their classic albums, Animals remains one of my fave albums of the second half of the 70's.

"Animals" has always been my favorite of all the FLOYD classics and for all the right reasons. This recording is all about simplicity from the philosophical concept to the song structures. The lyrics and the songs work on 2 different levels very effectively. I love the feel to this recording and think that FLOYD were at their most creative in 1977. The intro and closing sections are brilliant and pull the whole piece together with a simple little acoustic guitar ditty. The keyboard work of Rick Wright is quite brilliant here and I love the journey everytime.

Perhaps their best album, regarding of their experimental period, and one of the most underrated ones as well. It's not a typical "classic prog" number, but its attitude is always "progressive", as well as the barking dogs inside. The unique defect is represented by the tepid lyrics, which sometimes are not inspiring... but the rest is a "FLOYDian trademark".

Addendum as for a specific clarification (10-08-19): I woud like to explain the term "tepid" I used above, talking about the lyrics, during my first review...first of all it seems that P.F were not so original in choosing an important reference such as "G. Orwell", but nevermind, as They had chosen Tolkien as well inside another album, by mentioning him in a intelligent manner...instead here the choice- sometimes- is an hybrid between Orwell's Animal Farm from one side (Sorry in Italy the title is "La Fattoria degli animali", but I don't remember the original title in English), a simbolical act of rebellion against the political oppression of the governments and something different in the other side, which instead might have not any political indication; but at the end certainly They are completely into the first side in my opinion (perhaps I've committed a mistake, but it's my opinion only..). I wonder if the P.F. lyrics are looking forward a New Age here or- as I really think about this question- in this case it's not a natural effort. It seems all well organized and not so natural in the same time, but probably I'm wrong. So I used the term "tepid" in the sense of quite cold mood, not an enthusiastic and convincing choice as well, regarding a true natural rebellion of the band against the so called "matrix". To me, it rather seems a calculation, in order to earn consent among the normal listeners (those ones not completely into the prog music, I mean) and let them buy this classic ever green (instead the die-hard fan of the band- often by accepting every kind of lyrics coming from P.F.- is able to buy everything regarding them!! ...).

I hope it's enough to clarify my point of view, cause another reviewer asked me an explanation a couple of months ago, as this "Animals" is one of the most important albums ever by P.F.!!

Animals is the most guitar oriented album by Pink Floyd: David Gilmour abundantly uses acoustic and electric guitars. Animals is also a "David Gilmour" album, less a "Roger Waters" one, because it sounds a bit like his first solo album, made during the same time. Rick Wright's keyboards are sometimes subtly floating highly in the background; he often uses an ambient organ, some excellent Fender Rhodes parts, and spacy & experimental moog sounds. The bass is put on evidence here, being loud, present and quite bottom. The drums are varied and not continuous; they are often asynchronous. Roger Waters and David Gilmour share the lead vocals. On each track, there are the corresponding animal sounds produced. Animals is a visceral & underground album, less "superproduced" compared to the 2 previous albums: it brings you ineffable fascinating feelings, slightly marginal.

On "Dogs", some of the barking dogs are electronically reproduced. During the stagnant floating part of "Dogs", there is a repetitive sound sounding similar to the Violet District's "Terminal Breath" track. The floating keyboards are very intense and remind me the Gandalf of the 70's or the 2 first Taï Phong's albums. Gilmour brilliantly mixes acoustic and electric guitars together.

On "Pigs", the keyboards of the intro has probably inspired Mike Rutherford for the making of the "Smallcreep's Day" album. "Pigs" is more rhythmic with aggressive guitars and less keyboards.

"Sheep" starts with a delightful Fender Rhodes part, then Roger Waters sings while Gilmour plays a razor and incisive rhythmic guitar; after that, floating keyboards embark; then, 5 minutes after the beginning, one of the best dynamic & floating keyboards ambience made by Wright occurs: it just lasts couples of seconds, but is is AWESOME: just turn up the volume! The music then continues with electronically modified voices similar to the ones in the intro of the Tangerine dream's "Bent cold sidewalk" track; the track ends with EXTREMELY incisive electric guitar riffs, which make the King Crimson's "Sailor's Tale" riffs sound sissy!

The 2 acoustic "Pigs on the wing" tracks are very similar to the "Wish you were here" track, which can easily be played with an acoustic guitar in front of a fireplace.

Rating: 4.5 stars

More than an irrational, revealing album, "Animals" bring us all together to the misanthropic reality of what is it to be part of the humankind altogether. Strong uncomfortable lyrics, innuendos everywhere, sardonic composures and the majestic wit of Roger WATERS to explain the context of this abstract album in few words, "Animals" is all that. "Dogs" and "Sheep" explain themselves directly throughout finger pointing and devouring hints to the world apart ours. It's also liable to incur in several misunderstandings at the time we're listening to this record, because the social message is pretty clear: Man is responsible for man's actions. Take your time to discover this subliminal yet ironic message while you kick back taking critics from yourself. Enjoy. React. Rediscover.

Relaxing down on the farm

A bit disappointing this one.

Certainly "Dark Side of the Moon" and "Wish you were here" were always going to be tough to follow, but with Roger Waters becoming more and more the dominant influence, the message was starting to become more important than the music. Don't get me wrong, "Animals" is not a bad album, but there does at times appear to be a lack of inspiration.

If we gloss over the two brief "Pigs on the wing" bookends, the album consists of three lengthy tracks. "Dogs" occupies the whole of side 1 of the LP. It has all the right ingredients to make a fine prog piece but had it been half the length, it could have been twice as good. The track lacks the strong melodies which featured on previous albums, and rather sags during the middle section which appears to contain a certain amount of padding.

On "Pigs" the politics takes centre stage, making for a rather tedious track structured a bit like "Money", but without the catchy hook. The three long verses are once again filled out with pretty prosaic instrumentation, devoid of any real musical depth.

"Sheep" is the best track, with the band finally getting to let their hair down and having some fun. This track has more positive diversity than the other two added together, with strong melodies and an uplifting final section.

I readily acknowledge that the forgoing is a bit harsher than is perhaps justified. Pink Floyd had with their albums up to this point set themselves ever increasing standards to be matched or exceeded on subsequent albums. It was inevitable that at some stage, they would hit the wall (no pun intended) and release an album which, by their own high standards, was a sideways or even backwards step.

It's difficult to put my finger on exactly what I feel is lacking here. It appears to me the album was just too easy to make. It largely recycles the ideas which had been used to great effect on preceding albums, including not only the two immediate predecessors, but also "Meddle" and "Atom Heart mother" without any great effort to develop those ideas or explore new avenues.

"Animals" sold in droves, arguably on the back of the bands previous works, but with this album, the writing was starting to appear on the wall that the inspiration was running dry.

Sullen even by their standards, "Animals" is a dark, brooding, intractable slab of an album. Using GEORGE ORWELL's "Animal Farm" as a launching point, ROGER WATERS attacks complacency toward the status quo as a breeding ground for submission. The songs are diatribes against humanity, bookended by a pair of acoustic interludes that feign sweetness. Obviously, not everyone is enamored of Waters' long, nasty lecture against life; some found the numbing sameness a concession to waning creativity, others a relentless dressing-down at once mesmerizing and powerful. (For the record, I fall into column B.) If "Animals" finds itself shy of an arkful of musical ideas, guitarist DAVID GILMOUR steps in to fill the void with his poignant commentary. His leads are easily the album's most distinctive musical element, biting where the remaining instruments feel muted. In structure, it's not so different from "Wish You Were Here", but in sound the arrangements are stripped down to the lean muscle. "Animals" doesn't make any pretense of a positive spin; "Wish You Were Here" offered the chance of escape, "Animals" the option of ignorance. Unlike "The Final Cut", which was equally bleak, "Animals" is considered "classic" PINK FLOYD.

Those listeners in a meditative mood will find in this music a self-sustaining world where the air is not only breathable but pleasurable, albeit acrid. It's a heavy trip, but it's also intense in the best possible sense.

To me, I think "The Wall" is grossly overrated, but I think their previous album, "Animals" is much better. At this point, PINK FLOYD was obviously a household name. FM radio regularly played their stuff. They no longer had problems filling stadiums and arenas. For a followup to "Wish You Were Here", they had the balls to create no songs short enough to fit on the radio (except for the opening and closing acoustic pieces, "Pigs on the Wing" Part 1 and 2). While it's well known that when Waters started tightening the grip on the band, he started writing lyrics with basically an "I hate the world" theme (like on "The Wall"). Here he went for more a political bent, loosely basing the lyrics on George Orwell's Animal Farm, and being very highly critical of the political hierarcy, by giving certain groups of people names of "pigs" (greedy types), "dogs" (manipulative types), and "sheep" (mindless followers) in which the "sheep" eventually attack the "dogs" and "pigs".

Although some might like to think of this as their "punk rock" album, since it was 1977 and punk was the "new thing" in '77, to me, it's their last truly progressive album. For example, is "Dogs", at over 17 minutes long, you got yourself a lengthy, extended, adventurous number. I especially like the use of string synths and the sounds of dogs barking through a vocoder. "Sheep" has always been another favorite of mine. Many of the passages are quite reminescent of "Wish You Were Here", especially the synth solos. There's also a passage with the bass, synthesizers and some spoken vocoder dialog. "Pigs (Three Different Ones)" is also similar, but what's interesting is if you owned the cassette, they split the song in two, and it concludes on side two. The LP, on the other hand, has the song start on side two and no interruptions. Truly a great album, but my interest in PINK FLOYD stops here (as I hadn't been all that big on "The Wall", despite the immense popularity it has, not to mention being a fan favorite among many).

When I was very young, around five years old, PINK FLOYD's "Animals" was released. They tell me I would get the screaming terrors whenever one of my older siblings would play this album; I like to think that the subconscious impression it made on me forms much of the basis for my musical tastes. I grew to appreciate music that was unsettling and mysterious, and re-discovered PF about ten years later (a child's lifetime!). For a while, I cherished every album the band had released (except "Piper", which was too Brit-Psychedelic for me, and "Momentary Lapse" which- besides the fact that I didn't like it-came out just as I was losing my interest in Prog rock). I remember listening to "Animals" and being swept away into a dark and dangerous world, much more full of menace than the impersonal alienation of "Shine" and the ultra-personal self-imposed exile of "The Wall". In fact, this album gave me the creeps in the same dazed, out-of- focus way that parts of Ummagumma gave me, and I loved it. Flash forward to my late 20's, early 30's; I hadn't listened to PF or much Prog at all for at least a decade and I was nostalgic, so I picked up a used cassette of "Animals" and listened to it on my way home from work one day. I knew what to expect, and hoped some of the old lovely creepiness would touch me again. What I didn't expect was that this time around, I now had enough experience with the world to actually understand what was being sung...and it didn't just creep me out, it scared me s**tless. I started to empathize with "Dogs" instead of sharing the usual detached criticism. I had fallen into the office grind, 9 to 5 world and suddenly it was possible that I could turn into "just another sad old man, all alone and dying of cancer." The entire album seemed to perfectly portray the world around me, in all it's depressing and dehumanizing shades of grey and black. I'm usually a fairly even, rational person and I actually couldn't bring myself to listen to the album again for quite a while...and so I have to say that due to the varied, far- reaching and powerful emotional impact this album has had on me at three different times in my life, I regard it as the best PF album and one of the major musical influences on my life.

1977 saw the explosion of the punkscene in Britain where bands such as The Sex Pistols, The Clash and The Jam had taken over the industry. Prog rock was starting to get old and more upbeat, loud and frantic guitar was needed. Despite this Pink Floyd were still one of the best known and loved bands of 70's and at their prime. Whether The boys meant to or not, Animals had a more upbeat approach to it (this is very evident in the outro piano solo in sheep), probably subconciously, but it seemed to reflect the styles of the time.

Animals is a concept album which compares people in society to animals. The successful business types being the dogs, arrogant people of the media and higher class being pigs and people who follow trends and societies rules as being sheep. Of course this has to be backed up by appropriate lyrics but luckily that's no problem for Roger Waters.

Animals begins and ends with opposite versions of the quick acoustic piece "pigs on the wing" and is a good way of opening and closing the concept album. The main album lies in the 3 tracks inbetween. "Dogs" is the first of these, which shows impressive solo's by gilmour, rhythmic synth and piano pieces that are mirrored against rogers dark lyrics and basslines. The drumming is consistant where it is used yet slightly lacking in places. Dogs progresses well and is one of the bands most underrated pieces since atom heart mother. This is probably the best track on the album.

"Pigs (Three Different Ones)" is slyly titled and is perhaps a little weaker than "Dogs" and "Sheep" as it takes a while to pick up. The chorus here is excellent and is also very dark and daring. "Sheep" is the only song from animals that appeared on Echoes and rightly so. This has stretchy vocals that manage to rush through the raging piano and guitar battles. This song may weave on a bit but it is very captivating and enjoyable to listen to. The excellent outro is Richard Wrights highlight on the album. Animals may be a dismal attack on society but this is one of the bands most brilliant albums. Roger wouldn't be smiling very much after this one though.

I'm giving this album another go. It's still the least-good of Pink Floyd's late period (I don't count "The Final Cut," and I pretend the Gilmour days never happened), but it's pretty alright. You should pick it up if you've already enjoyed Dark Side, Wish You Were Here, Meddle, or The Wall.

The album begins with "Pigs on the Wing (Part One)," an entirely acoustic Waters number which sort of preludes the cynicism to come (and acts as a balance). It somehow softens the blow.

"Dogs." This is an excellent song, about those who cannot trust anymore. It drags in a lot of places - there is a lot of filler - but many of the themes (musical & lyrical) are absolutely classic.

"Pigs (three different ones)" is a sort of quasi-punk anger anthem. It's got a sardonic edge, but I have trouble really getting into it. It is rather funky, and more indicative (musically) of were Floyd would go with "The Wall" than anything else. Pink Floyd's classic "space" sound really started to deteriorate on this album.

"Sheep" is pretty good - dark bass lines creep up on some unsuspecting keyboard licks at the introduction. The song proper is again more hard-rock than Pink Floyd used to be, but it's pretty nice. Not exactly exceptional, but pretty nifty.

The second part of "Pigs on the Wing" takes over from there. It's a nice, optimistic way to close a very pessimistic album.

Pink Floyd was always a solid band that maintained their classical sound and style even in the hardest moments when they lost key members like Syd Barret and Roger Waters or when all the rest of the progressive bands considered they had to start a radical change in order to survive.

"Animals" is a prove of this regularity, released in 1977 when the first peak of Prog Rock was in the past and bands as Genesis and Yes were starting to mix some radio friendly tracks with their usual music and beginning to flirt with pop, but Pink Floyd released a semi-conceptual album much more complex than the two previous masterpieces, like trying to show the path to the rest of the prog' bands.

Even the length of the tracks (three 10 minutes + songs) was unexpected for the end of the 70's when all the bands were trying to make shorter tracks that could fit the radio requirements.

Based in Orwell's Animal Farm, even when is not an adaptation, "Animals" is a very obscure album in a year when all the bands tried to be simpler and lighter this great release would never be a financial success as "Dark Side of the Moon" or considered an Icon as "Wish You Were Here", but IMHO it has the same quality of the ones mentioned and the last real masterpiece by Pink Floyd.

Some months ago I was talking about "Animals" with a friend and he told me that this release showed a more developed Pink Floyd, a phrase with which didn't agree in that moment. It's clear Animals has many more clear references to British Psychedelia than any album after Atom Heart Mother and in many parts reminiscent of Wish You Were Here, even when the band manages to create something original and extremely creative.

But after some days and a couple more of listens started to agree more with my friend, "Animals" has some of the typical aggressiveness of Punk Rock, they needed to change in order to survive but they did it with respect for their history and fans.

"Pigs on the Wing" is a beautiful semi acoustic track by Roger Waters, but the soft music has a great contrast with the pain expressed in the lyrics, it's clear that Roger was taking the band an starting to express with more freedom his political point of view.

"Dogs" is the central track of the album, a 17 minutes epic that resumes Pink Floyd career, great guitar solos by David Gilmour, incredible vocals by him and Roger and of course intelligent lyrics. The constant changes are soft, not as radical as other progressive bands did before, but they manage to include something of each musical moment in the history of Pink Floyd. One of the best tracks ever released by the band.

"Pigs (Three Different Ones)" is a hard track more in Rock vein; the lyrics are absolutely aggressive and political. I can listen clear psychedelic references along the song.

If you think the lyrics of the previous tracks are controversial, then the ones in "Sheep" could be considered almost offensive and anti religious, the masses are described as weak followers always afraid of the everything and spend their lives eating and surviving in order to have a chance to grow old. Roger's bass is outstanding and Rick is also brilliant with the keys. The guitar section near the end is simply amazing.

"Pigs on the Wing Part Two" sounds almost exactly to part one, but the lyrics express a bit more of optimism or at least is less depressing than the first one.

"Animals" is probably the last album released by Pink Floyd that can achieve the status of masterpiece, even when the decline in this band was less evident than in most of the other members of the big 5 group.

I can't give less than 5 stars to this wonderful albums.

If I have not reviewed this album so far, it does not necessarily mean that I'm not interested to review this album. I tend to refrain from reviewing it because I think this album is too perfect so that it does not deserve any review. So is the case with this write-up. I don't intend to review this album which is one of seminal works of the prog rock legend, rather .. ...I'd like to give my deepest and sincere appreciation on how brilliant this album is! One thing that triggers me to prepare a write-up for this is due to recent discussion about this album in a classic rock community, m-claro.

With only one song "Dogs" I dare to give a recommendation to all of you that you should have owned this album. Why? This track is terrific, ie. It has an excellent music flow, great composition with a very tight structural integrity whereby the blend of melodies are composed in such a way that can lift up your emotion. The changing tempo is controlled in a manageable way, there is no sudden change as the transitions between musical segments are crafted smoothly by the band. The music starts with an ambient and spacey acoustic guitar rhythm combined with a simple synthesizer sound and its effects. When the vocal line enters the scene "You got to be crazy!" - it projects a sense of energy to the listeners. The tempo is then rising to higher stage when drumming is entering the music while maintaining the same guitar rhythm at the same pace. You will find then the lead guitar sound that accentuates the textures of the music and set the tone for higher vocal voice. When the interlude starts with a bluesy lead guitar work, that's when the ultimate enjoyment of this track come to your mind. What a wonderful lead guitar! It then flows to a spacey music with acoustic guitar rhythm, keyboard and the howling dog sound. Again, the lead guitar is showing its dominance nicely and it's rocking this time! It sets the atmosphere for a voice line "And when you loose control / You'll reap the harvest you have sown .." uugghhhh ... oh my God. what a nice part here!!!!!!! ..... I can not control my adrenalin from exploding! This piece is really great, my friend! "So have a good drown, as you go down, all alone . dragged down by the stone!" . it then flows to, again, a spacey sound with synthesizers and howling dogs. Very nice. If you don't enjoy this track first time listening to it, give another try! It'll grow with number of spins you have. I never get bored with this track.

Other tracks are excellent too. "Pigs" is a much more an upbeat track with a drumming style similar to Yes' "Does It Really Happen?" or "Owner of a Lonely Heart". But, don't get me wrong, this track is structurally different with those 2 Yes songs. It has a spacey touch with a high energy vocal line, stunning guitar fills and rhythm. I especially like the atmospheric intro whereby the solo keyboard / synthesizer is combined with great bass line (as lead) and some electric guitar rhythm. It's a happy song. It has similar interlude style as "Dogs" where there is a relatively long spacey keyboard in the middle of the track as well as pig sounds. This is the kind of track you'd like to wake you up and lift up your emotion in the morning. It's very uplifting track!

Again, in "Sheeps" the band starts its act with a nice solo keyboard / organ followed slowly with soft bass guitar line and drumming. The tempo is suddenly inclining when the music starts to roll with other instruments come into play. It's so rocking - singing-wise as well as musically, with a stunning guitar rhythm. As with other tracks, this track is by no exception has a spacey touch as well. This time, the band demonstrates the guitar and keyboard works. It flows to a more rocking tempo and back to spacey stuff again. And then back again to rocking tempo - It's an interesting track to enjoy.

Friends, I don't think that I'm too naïve if I give a rating of 5 / 5 as this album is really a masterpiece. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED. GW, Indonesia.

I find I listern to 'Animals' more than 'Wish you were here' 'Animals' is a colder album, and more narrow in scope and appeal, but for some morbid reason it appeals to me! The general theme of the album is the likening of different types of people to certain kinds of animals. Sheep, for instance following one another, Dogs taking what they can get, pigs, fat cat types..you get the picture. The album is laced with bitterness and a sense of dissapointment, like much of Floyds music, but it also IMO has some of Dave Gilmours finest guitar work, and some of Roger Waters finest lyrics. This is notable on 'Dogs' a 17 minute epic of doom and despair, with striking dark imagery of being 'broken by trained personel' and 'dragged down by the stone!' The album may be dark, but it makes me smile, and I always feel very satisfied after listerning to it. Perhaps that says more about me than it does the emotional state of the band...

The soloing is excellent. The quality of music consistent throughout, and the production pretty good. Its classic late '70s Floyd, embellished by the classic cover featuring Battersea power station.

How could any band release a follow up after the likes of Wish You Were Here and still release an essential classic? Well Pink Floyd did very ably with Animals. A snarling gnashing album full of vitriol, angst and evident distaste of society and the establishment at the time. ' Pigs on the Wing part one' starts the album off. Short accoustic piece led by Roger Waters and what a beautiful piece of music too. Probably the most nostagic parts, 1 and 2 on Animals. ' Dogs' is the prize though on Animals. A 17 minute epic full of angry and sad lyrics. Musically very rich with keyboard, bass and excellent Gilmour guitar. Mason's drumming too is superb. ' Pigs - 3 different kinds' takes a real stab at the late Mary Whitehouse, the prim lady from the UK who took great pleasure in trying to slap censorship on anything from expletives to nipples...' Your'e really a cry....". 'Sheep' is next and well the title is self explanatory about aimless wars and ' lemming' like metality. A great edited rendition of the Lords Prayer on Sheep too. The album ends off on ' Pigs on the wing part 2' which really cements why being with loved ones are probably the safest and best course in this mad world. No change since 1977 really! Animals is a dark brooding classic and was such a bold statement by the Floyd. In restrospect only The Wall could logically follow Animals, not so?

This album has very good, intelligent lyrics by Roger Waters. Even if they show sad things about planet earth and humanity, power, greed, in the end they show some hope, despite the never ending struggle for power and survival. This album is more interesting for me because of the concept behind the lyrics. Water`s lyrics and music (with only one contribution by Gilmour) are complemented very good by all members of the band.This album is better than the overrated "The Wall". Pink Floyd started to fragment with this album, but it is still a good album.

It was only recently that in my restless prog mind I finally decided that this is my fave PF album ever, after so many years of giving it silver or bronze status. Following in the trend of stylish, lush symphonic-oriented psychedelia that had been gloriously laid down by their DSOTM and WYWH albums, the major asset in favor of "Animals" is the return of a rocking edge that had been somewhat subdued after the release of 1971's "Meddle". In the three main tracks the listener can find the perfect confluence of hard sounding guitar parts played by Gilmour, and the multiple layers and colours brought in by Wright's keyboards. These two sonic sources are heavily featured in unison, in this way creating a solid musical nucleus for each one of those tracks. Meanwhile, Waters and Mason are evidently trying to keep up with their partner's renewed sense of energy, and they manage to do so in an impressive manner. The album's conceptual link is based on a bleak overall look at the three species of the human race in the modern culture, each one more abject than the other: the greedy elite of finance top bosses and promising status seekers (the Dogs); the wily powers- that-be (the Pigs); and the meek, oppressed, oblivious majorities who are also accomplices for their own victimization (the Sheep). The articulation of this unpleasant neighborhood is founded on an Orwellian scheme that dehumanizes human beings and turns them into mere cogs of a monstrous machinery. So, the appearance of the vocoder in 'Dogs' (the delirious barking during the spacey interlude) and 'Sheep' (the oppressed man's credo) helps to illustrate musically this particular point. Waters, as the main writer (of all lyrics and most of the music) puts himself on an "objective" location, as a lucid outsider who depicts the ways of the world - that's why the acoustic intro 'Pings on the Wing (Part 1)' conveys such an air of intimacy and complicity. Then comes the first epic, 'Dogs', which pretty much sums up the overall essence of the album. Gilmour shines brightly as a diamond, creating lots of varied tenures on his guitar harmonies, riffs and solos: he is clearly enjoying his creative freedom within the confines of the well structured musical ideas comprised in this epic. The interlude gives Wright some wide room to assume the leading role for a while: his synths create an almost cinematographic ambience, which suits the inherent drama. Due to the fact that is more obviously blues-rock centered, 'Pigs' turns out to be the most conventional number in the album, but it doesn't mean that it's dull or boring, just less challenging: but Gilmour's talk box guitar middle solo and ultra-aggressive final solo are nothing to be missed. My favorite track is the last epic: 'Sheep', when compared to 'Dogs', is equally brilliant in terms of arranging and performing, but superior in terms of power and musical magic. The interplay among all four Floyd members is the most cohesive in the album, and the diverse successive sections constitute a fluid amalgam right up until the climatic closing motif goes fading out among the noises of sheep bleating. It's happened to me more than once: feeling captivated by the fury exposed by the instrumentation and the lyrics, I ended up hating those noisy animals. Waters' hopeless message hides a clear message: its subtext is a call to conscience that is to be understood and developed by the listener. But meanwhile, the deceitfully calm cynicism of the acoustic intro is reprised by the closure 'Pigs on the Wing (Part 2)'. The way I see it, this album's main purpose on a conceptual level is to plant a seed of discomfort in the listener's soul: now, it's up to them to leave it as a mere complaint, or to take it to the next level and grow a plant of clever criticism in their heart. On an artistic level, this is simply one hell of a PF masterpiece.

The pinnacle of Pink Floyd's career.

I say this for two reasons. One, after Animals the quality of albums takes a bit of dive (some good for sure, but nothing even close to Animals IMO). And two, I do believe this to be their best album, especially in a progressive rock context. The long form song writing was something the Floyd was did well, even back in the beginning days, and Animals shows off why. The two short pieces are a good prelude and postlude to the proceedings, though they really aren't anything special. Dogs (really) starts things off with some wonderful guitar and atmosphere. The elongated instrumental middle section is gorgeous and effective. The ending is some fierce sounding stuff, with a fantastic riff. Pigs (Three Different Ones) is more rock-y with some rather scathing lyrics lobbed towards a public figure. Sheep is the most tranquil (perhaps fittingly so) and contains some great work by Wright. Lyrically, this album is strong and even though it's not really a concept album, it does have that connected feeling between all songs.

All in all, this is surely an album progressive rock fans should hear. Pink Floyd hasn't hit this level in their career again, or beforehand, rendering this a special album. And who doesn't love that album cover! 5 stars without question. Highly recommended.

Where The Wall had weak music and a strong concept, Animals is the reverse: music that is for the most part excellent, but a concept that really should not have been bound together so tightly, or perhaps even foregone completely. This is where ROGER WATERS, to my ear, first made a highly aggressive attempt to force music (and certain band members) to the back burner, and it seems to, lyrically and conceptually, have done more damage than good. The internal friction within the band ultimately cost them dearly. Their previous work, Wish You Were Here, would be their last truly balanced album until The Division Bell.

I should mention, though, that this IS a very nicely done album from a musical standpoint, despite the places where WATERS seems to begin the trend (brought to fruition on The Wall) of stripping out the mystery and the ambience of the music, no longer allowing it (or its writers) to speak for itself. Easily, "Dogs" is the most spectacular of the songs on this albums. In fact, I credit GILMOUR's fascinating acoustic guitar playing here for inspiring me to take up the instrument--that is just how good he is here. The chord sequence is mesmerising...and that's putting it mildly. Also, despite the fact that WRIGHT isn't even granted a single credit on this album (even GILMOUR only gets one!), he does utterly jaw-dropping things with a synthesiser in the interlude of this song, which may in fact be the best segment on the entire album to listen to. THIS is what makes Animals worth purchasing--no doubt in my mind.

"Pigs" is an interesting, though somewhat less innovative number that (IF you totally believe the credits, which I don't) was written by ROGER WATERS. Perhaps its most notable features are GILMOUR's talk-box solo. There's also the uncharacteristically blunt, angry piano work from WRIGHT, which makes one imagine him fuming silently in the background over the course the band was trying to take without him. "Sheep" is notable for the Rhodes intro by WRIGHT, for which, along with other synth and effect contributions on this song, I think he really ought to be credited. Also an interesting sonic trick is the blending of WATERS' voice into the synth. But ultimately, the pre-Animals concert version, "Raving and Drooling", was far superior...which gets to the root of the problem with Animals in the lyrical and conceptual department.

Animals, I believe, is the concept that never should have been. Following the success of The Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here, WATERS seems to have felt compelled to follow immediately with a third album in the same vein. Not yet having envisioned The Wall, he seems to have had a lot of very adolescent angst with nowhere to go. Since an album consisting simply of pure ranting and venting would not do, he tried to cobble together a concept by assigning the categories of people he didn't like the names of animals, a move that would appear to parallel Orwell's Animal Farm. Unfortunately, this only succeeded in showing just how contrived the "concept" really was--it may in fact have been better for him to just leave the animal references out, and wait a bit longer for a more innovative concept to come along...or best of all, just relax and jam. The lyrics become laughable, in their display of blind, immature, and pointless anger...and yes, I admit I am biased because of what that anger did both on and off the stage. And I also admit to bias because of the bastardization of the 23rd Psalm during "Sheep"--the centerpiece of the song, no less...that went one too far and I think it was gratuitous, to say the least. He could've made his point without actually perverting a text that many, in two religions, hold sacred.

Probably the worst thing that could've happened to Animals was "Pigs on the Wing". These annoyingly simplistic guitar songs attempt to tie the album together, giving it the same cyclic nature as the previous two concept albums. But instead, they come off as nothing but bookends...and not even impressive ones, at that. The second one, especially, is a problem because it turns around and completely flies in the face of the entire atmosphere WATERS has been building over the course of the album. It's a syrupy-sweet love song, of all things, which is very clearly just tacked onto the end of the album.

In my opinion, Animals did have potential, especially with the great music in the middle three songs, but in his obsessive haste, ROGER WATERS instead started the process of driving PINK FLOYD into the ground, which culminated in the breakup after The Wall>. This is an interesting album in many regards--but make sure to pick up Meddle, The Dark Side of the Moon, and Wish You Were Here first, to understand what the four-member PINK FLOYD was at its finest.

My first review here, so I figure I'd better start with the best (and most listened to) album in my collection, 'Animals'. If I could recommend only one album, of any musical genre, this would be it.

"Pigs On The Wing" appears innocently enough to the unsuspecting listener as a short and soft intro. But be forewarned, this is no ordinary FLOYD. Prepare to be pulled in and taken on a forty minute...

"You've got to be crazy..."

Too late, it has begun. Just try to hang on.

"Dogs" is the most complete FLOYD song ever written. It has everything that could possibly illustrate what their music is: Waters' most biting and cynical lyrics; emotion-provoking Gilmour solos; tone; sound sampling; equal Gilmour/Waters song structure; atmosphere; plenty of satire; two different vocalists and yet still more Gilmour guitar all painted on a seventeen minute canvass. And how very dark and sombre this piece of art is. What Waters creates lyrically, Gilmour matches musically. Do yourself a favour and download the free "Dogs" mp3 file offered by this site, it will change the way you listen to music.

As great as the studio version of "Pigs (3DO)" is on this album, it is absolutely mental when heard live! Some of the most astounding guitar work of Gilmour's career can be found on the 20+ minute RoIO's of this song on their '77 Tour. There is no other experience like Gilmour improvising on his Strat. One of the truly cherished Live songs from their vast catalogue.

Rick Wright comes to the forefront with his keyboard work on "Sheep": arguably the hardest punk song written, from the most un-punk band ever. The bass and keyboards play prominent roles on this track, setting the frantic pace of a simulated chase. Marvel at the (Gilmour performed) driving bass line during the sixth minute of this song, just prior to the android-inspired Lord's Prayer. Pay attention not only to what Waters is saying in this song, but HOW he is saying it. Similar to Peter Gabriel, Waters doesn't just sing, he vocalizes.

And just as suddenly as it began, the experience ends with the reprise of "Pigs On The Wing" wafting past us once again through our now enlightened ears, and assaulted mind, gently floating past what looks to be Battersea Station...

Easily the most important FLOYD album, prog album, and rock album that I own. Not just a cornerstone of any musical collection, but its zenith.

I only purchased this album about a year ago and I'm not the biggest Floyd fan.However this must be reckoned as one of the best prog albums.Much like Close To The Edge and Selling England By The Pound this sounds like a well thought out and complete work.The theme is well explored on all the peices.Dogs is quite something as people have remarked while Sheep adds an almost punk like attitude.Those are the main peices but it it all stands up well.For my money this is Gilmours best album,his guitar work is stunning while Rick Wright compliments him perfectly on the keyboards.Easy to give this an essential rating.5 stars.

This is my favorite studio release from the band's mid-1970's releases. I think on these three ambitious concept record epics the band evolved with this album to their greatest heights. Wrapped inside a short piggy theme reside three long songs, which seem to describe different kind of human personalities via animal comparisons. The compositions are great, not being very complex, but hypnotic and quite dark. The use of effects is tasteful, and it is easy to return to listen at this album still after owning it over a decades. The record allows time for dramatic curves to bend with necessary time, and the psychological feeling of the album wholeness seems very inviting. On the earlier albums there were fine moments, but I think scrutinizing forty minutes of compact rock music to an album without distracting moments or details is a fine accomplishment. Working their way to this statement is a source of rejoicing. After this release I think the group's megalomania on epic concepts and compositional contradictions got crushed between the walls of artistic ideas and commercial pressures clash.

My favorite Pink Floyd album, the most progressive of the bands repetoir. What really turned me on was the dark themes and the incredible musicianship. Roger Waters really knew what he was doing with this album. There is no weak track, and everything about the album is simply perfect.

The album begins and ends with Pigs on the Wing. An acoustic piece (originally connected together through a guitar solo bridge from Snowy White), this really is the only track that doesn't fit with the rest of the album, but still it is a great piece. From the end of the first part, the best track of the album comes. Dogs begins as an acoustic piece, with great vocals by Gilmour (the only song on the album to feature his voice), and arguably the best guitar work from Gilmour as well. The song is about people who fight to get their way to the top, whether it's by cheating, stealing, murdering, etc. The solos that Gilmour provides are immaculate in their tone, and they could make the toughest man cry. The middle parts where the intensity simmers down and the sultry keyboard takes the forefront are also great. The keyboard solo that Wright gives off is one of the best things he's done in the group. The song ends with a great final stanza, one of the most singable parts of the album. The next song, Pigs (Three Different Ones), is a attack at the crooked politicians in the world at that time. Featuring a great guitar riff, and incredible Waters bass line, great keyboards by Wright, and an incredible ending guitar solo from Gilmour, this song really can only be summed up in two words, absolutely astounding. I cannot express how great this song is. The next song, Sheep, begins with a great Wright electric piano opening, a very jazzy section. The song then evolves into an intense, aggressive nightmare that really is one of the greatest 10 minutes of music.

Overall, I say that this is the best Pink Floyd album, hands down. It never ceases to bore me, and I'm always left with chills when it is over. It gets my highest recommendation.

This album is very different from its predecessors. It is the FLOYD at their most violent, and there's much more guitar than synths through the songs, being less atmospheric and much heavier instead. Actually, 1977 was the year of Punk music, and this sure is the FLOYD's closest encounter with the Punk style, especially on the song "Sheep", so the violence of this album has some influence from the directions music was taking at that year. But the punks always hated prog bands and artists, tagging them as pretentious and boring. The FLOYD, though, didn't feel like making huge tons of simple noisy songs so they still maintained their progressive line, only with a more angry tone. It worked perfectly, and this album is one of the most different ones of the FLOYD catalogue, since they never reached such level of heaviness in their other works.

Here we unfortunately have the begining of Rick's loss of inspiration. He was having trouble with his marriage, and Roger was starting to take full control. The band was getting severely unstable. Dave and Roger passed ten years fighting for the album's royalties, and Nick and Rick were just playing their instruments and not writing anything. David Gilmour and Roger Waters were the two prime forces, one in charge of the amazing music found here and another writing the well crafted lyrics that aren't outdated by now and work even better nowadays. The concept is simple, since it is entirely based on George Orwell's book "Animal Farm", being not so original as the one from "The Wall". Actually, David's music is what really shines. Without him, this album wouldn't be half as great as it is. Roger's solo works proved that only long and creative lyrics with a bland music don't make justice to a song, so Animals features the most well accomplished combination of music and lyrics on a FLOYD album, losing only for WYWH.

About the songs, here we have two short acoustic pieces that serve to make the classic cyclic effect found in most FLOYD albums. "Pigs on the wing pts1 and 2" are both very pleasant and don't follow the album's overall tone of anger. "Dogs" is an excellent epic track featuring my favorite lyrics by Waters and some of the most delightful guitar work by David Gilmour. "Pigs, 3 different ones" has some very violent lyrics and an amazing intro. "Sheep" is my favorite song from this album, from the initial keyboards to the final guitar solo this song defines the word "brilliance" in its ten minutes.

Although this is one of my less listened FLOYD works, i have to admit its brilliance despite all the conflicts that were begining to rise between the band members. It's clear that Roger wanted a new direction for the band's music, and this would be completely accomplished on "The Wall", where his influence would be even stronger than here.

Not Commercial, not for radio, not for dancing.

A very strong album of Pink Floyd, in which they sacrificed accessible songwriting to create three giant complex and long songs. This is the first album in which Roger Waters seemed to dominate the music. His vocals are much more present that in the previous works, and his cynical lyrics were prominent. Influenced by George Orwells 'Animals', Waters created a concept album of humanity. Humans are divided into Pigs (greedy leaders) Dogs (manipulators or soldiers working under the pigs), and Sheep (mindless followers). The album ends when the sheep finally stand up for themselves.

Pigs of the Winds pt1+pt2 : It is a short ballad that begins and ends the album. It is a nice contrast to the hard prog throughout the album. I like the chord progressions in it. 8/10

Dogs : The big epic of the album. It is a whooping seventeen minute track and one of the most progressive songs of the band. Here, you have the chance to hear a great keyboard solo, and Gimour mixing Electric and acoustic guitars. 8.5/10

Pigs : A very angry song (Waters even screams a profane word somewhere). The bass playing is something to pay attention to in the beginning, and when the song reaches its instrumental break ... a simple, yet effective, acoustic guitar riff is played over pig noises. Close to the end of the song, Gilmour uses a pedal to make his instrument sound like a pig. 8/10

Sheep : This is the heaviest track of the album and it is fueled by rage. The sheep decide to revolt, making this song a powerful climax of the album. 7/10

My grade : B

Roger Water's lyrical masterpiece, ANIMALS, is also Pink Floyd's most progressive work, and the least accessible of their commercially golden period (1973-1979). It also has some of their best guitar work, courtesy of David Gilmour, and Water's best (read: insane) lyrics to date. It is clear that by this point Water's had rested creative control from the band, as he handles all of the songwriting and vocals, formerly shared between the band mates. ANIMALS is Pink Floyd's most depressing work, but is not as creepy as Water's 1979 rock opera THE WALL or as monotonous as 1983's THE FINAL CUT. While DARK SIDE OF THE MOON is Pink Floyd's twenty-five time platinum chartbuster, ANIMALS in it's methodical way remains their greatest work. ANIMALS is as bleak and depressing as the coal-power plant on its cover, and makes the listener feel this way too. It continues the themes of depression, isolation and paranoia prevalent on DARK SIDE OF THE MOON (1973) and WISH YOU WERE HERE (1975), but is an abrupt departure from the warm sentiments expressed on WISH YOU WERE HERE. One could definitely describe this album as remote and cold. It is Orwellian in nature, and recalls Orwell's "Animal Farm" directly. It classifies humanity into three groups, Dogs, Pigs and Sheep. The Dogs are the henchmen and enforcers of the ruling pigs, who in turn oppress the meek Sheep.

It is bracketed by two light acoustic pieces Pigs on the Wing, Part 1 and Pigs on the Wing, Part 2. These are the only warm tracks on the album, and have only acoustic guitar and reassuring vocals. This safety soon ends with the harsh electric guitar, and harsher lyrics of the seventeen minute long suite, Dogs. This is one of the group's strongest tracks, and has their best lyrics ever. Dogs is fantastic, with an amazing vocal crescendo at the end. This song is written about the "Dog Eat Dog" business world, has lyrics to give firepower to its message. The song also has an interesting audio clip of a dog howling into a vocoder. Just one of Pink Floyd's countless auditory special effects. Pigs (Three Different Ones) is also exceptional, but is the weaker of the three extended pieces. Remember, it is only weak when compared to the other great songs here. It is typical Floyd, and has heavy guitar, distorted vocals, and heavy soloing. In this track Water's insults British Politicians, like Mary Whitehouse, a notorious censor. The brilliant song Sheep opens with Richard Wright's keyboards setting the mood, and quickly explodes into Floyd pandemonium. Again, we see exceptional playing and lyrics. Sheep is also a bit brighter than its album counterparts, as it ends with the oppressed masses rising up and liberating themselves from the Pigs and Dogs. It also features a very catchy synthesized coda. One complaint against this album is it is very guitar-dominated. Wright's keyboards play small roles, but when they do, they are usually good. Water's was growing increasingly irritated with Wright, culminating in his ouster from the band in 1979 by Water's. The Album closes with Pigs on the Wing again, which puts the listener back in the calm mood he started with and eases him out of the fright fest known as a Pink Floyd album.

The seeds of discontent were being sown at this time within the band, and their subsequent output is much weaker. Water's made himself band dictator, and the music later suffers for it (see THE FINAL CUT). Nonetheless, this is a very strong album and gets 5 stars as Pink Floyd's best work, easily contending with the slick DARK SIDE OF THE MOON and spacey WYWH.

Another great album by the Floyd, and again close to masterpiece standard. The lyrics are biting and at time savage (Mary Whitehouse comes in for special treatment), describing three types of human beings in animal form. The music is excellent and on Sheep, they come closer to rocking than for a long time. I love the way the vocal transforms into a synth on this track by using a vocorder. There are some great guitar solos and fine keyboard work, especially on Dogs. It's angry, bitter stuff, probably the last of their great albums and probably the last before the inner conflict and power battles in the band ruined their collective cohesiveness. But (as noted by the previous reviewer) it's a bit too"in yer face" to merit 5 stars; it doesn't persuade, it bludgeons. Still an essential buy.

Waters taking final control over band!

This is the beginning of the string of FLOYD albums with Waters' attitude "Pink Floyd - that's me!", which ends with controversial "The Final Cut" in 1983 and his departure for solo career. "Animals" was still an excellent work with dark lyrics and top-notch music production. Apart from omni-present Waters, Gilmour also had a prominent role especially co-writing "Dogs" one of true epic gems of FLOYD catalogue, with more than chilling guitar work. Another highlight is "Sheep" with strong pulsating bass line and wonderful Wright's synths - very horror-filled ambience and hints of TANGERINE DREAM better moments of the same era. Recommended to all prog fans, while I would advise novices to start FLOYD voyage elsewhere first.

This is probably, (with the exception of 'The Final Cut') the most depressing of Floyd's output. Not my favourite disc by them, I have tried, over the years, to like it, but never quite managed to rate it on a par with the likes of 'The Wall', 'Meddle' or 'Dark Side'. The songs are not really representative of the band. Gilmour's guitar work is quite rough, and not up to the usual standard. Wright's keyboard work seems to me to take a step backward here, to some of his not so impressive work on Atom Heart Mother or Ummagumma. Mason is about the same as usual, but Waters again suffers with too much angst and not enough melody. Sorry this is not a good review, and I know there are Floyd fans out there who rate this their best. But for me it isn't. I remember when it was released, and it was considered, after the two year wait (in those days, two years was considered a self-indulgent waste of time) to be a disappointment. There is pointless dog barking here, unmusical sound effects, and the whole package, to me, is sloppy. I give this three stars, the same score I gave 'Wish You Were Here', yet that album is clearly superior to this one, and the following masterpiece, 'The Wall' confirms that this is, indeed, a thorn between two roses. Not a bad record, but nothing to write home about.

Probably IMO the most progressive one!! overall. Rogers influence is getting stronger, and I think disputes started to surface on this one. But, production and quality are espectacular... I love this one to dead!! No question in my mind that the social issues raise in the album, are of major significance for the band and specially for Mr. Waters!! Another Gem!!!!!!!!!!!!!

As a teenager when this album came out I remember seeing ads on TV promoting the album. When's the last time, or even first time you can say that about a prog band, especially during the late 70's? I'm not the biggest Floyd fan, but this has been and always will be my favorite Pink Floyd album. The main reason why I like this one so much is the simple fact that it's not about Syd Barret and his descention into madness. And it also carries some of my favorite lyrics by Waters. It's not a perfect album by any means. Rating each song, 'Pigs On A Wing' parts 1 & 2 are standard acoustic songs but adding them to the album whole they're essential to the theme. This album scared me when I listened to it back in the day, with it's plodding and depressive nature of man and the creatures we're compared to. Nowadays, listening to it, I find parts like the center section of 'Dogs' and the Bon Jovi/Peter Frampton voice manipulation device on 'Pigs' more padding then needed. I do think Gilmour's guitar is the star of the show with Water's bass slipping to fourth string behind Wright's often chilly keyboards and Mason's tight and airy drumming. But then comes 'Sheep'. My all-time favorite Floyd song and the most upbeat rockin tune on the album. Wright's jazzy-style piano opens up the song and then Water's and crew jet-propel in and we're going full throtle for most of the way. Their most unique song ever! Dark Side Of The Moon may be their magnum opus and note-for-note perfect album, but I feel this is their most down-to- earth record. 4.5 stars! And as a side note, if you're a fan of Porcupine Tree and want to know why they're compared to Pink Floyd, just play 'Dogs'.

Once upon a time, it was in 1977, and black clouds overshadowed the musical land pouring out their filthy burden of rotten tomatoes and evil discos when Pink Floyd bravely released "Animals" - a very progressive and highly conceptual album. One may say that the band only accomplished their contractual obligations and nothing more that it. But instead of releasing a second-class opus they gifted us with a first- class ticket to a cloudless world of marvels.

Due to the strangeness of the moment this work remained a bit far from eyes and ears and also is understandable that many could have supposed that was impossible for Pink Floyd to release an album as good as previous "Dark Side of the Moon" and "Wish You Were Here", but they did and were splendid!

There are also the references to Orwell's "Animal Farm", a great book but little known for non-English speakers ("1984", other Orwell's book is widely well-known) and references to a certain political phase in Britain that did not concern listeners around the world.

However, this elegant album is like a good wine having aged very well and still awesome to be heard and appreciated. Many people that did not include it among the basic Floyd discography are changing their minds and putting "Animals" alongside other band's bulwarks. Production and musicianship are fine and these by themselves make the album worthy.

There are in fact 3 songs, talking about three different species of humans, i.e., animals, 'Dogs', 'Pigs' and 'Sheep', being the second of the songs by its turn divided in 3 pieces: a main theme and two secondary themes, the shortest tracks in the album, both responsible for opening and ending the disk.

Although I sympathize much more with the character 'sheep' I consider the song 'Dogs' the best in the album, with an overall catchy atmosphere, great vocals and fine guitar background and solo; no surprise at all, as observed by other reviewers this is basically a 'guitar album' and this track is a good example of the path taken.

'Pigs' for some reason reminds me Harrison's 'Piggies' and there's also something Beatle-ish in the vocals and in the arrangement - one can argue that certain tunes a la Moody Blues are heard too. However, a bunch of swine sound effects spread throughout the song impoverish instead of enrich it, nevertheless the final result is fairly audible. The brief tracks 'Pigs on the wing, parts 1 & 2' albeit inserted in the general subject add little musically.

'Sheep' provides the angriest moments of the album, vocals and guitars are almost ever nervous, the general ambience varies from ironic tenderness to furious revolt. This track is album's most Floydian with chords recalling to 'One of these days' from album "Meddle", drums and bass with lines similar to 'Echoes' from the same album and exquisite keyboard tunes in "Atom Heart Mother" way. A (good) sensation of old PF's stuff grazes over the song.

This is an album compulsory to any prog (or non-prog) music collection. Excellent! Total: 4.

4.5/5.0

This is my favorite early Pink Floyd album. The acoustic sound of "Pigs on the wing" is absolutely marvelous and starts the album very smoothly and comfortably. Then « You got to be crazy! » starts on "Dogs" like thunder in a clear sky. The rest of the album is simply as good as the first part. If there was only one word to describe this album: INTENSITY! It is not very complex from a technical point of view, yet it is emotional, with many great climax (particularly at the end of "Dogs") and always the acoustic touch not very far behind. Those guys were only four, but the music is very rich and competes easily with other bands with a wider variety of instruments.

This album is the proof that technical complexity is not the road to success. A band doesn't have to play fast-hand-banging crazy guitar riffs all the way (like Dream Theater as an example) to make a good album. On the opposite, "Animals" is a slow- developping album, trying to maximize the emotions and feelings of every note or every twist. This is a melancolic show, but what a show! 4.5/5.0

Animals shows us the perfect transition album. On one hand we have the "sound and arregements" like of WYWH and on the other we have the more depressing concept of what the Wall would be. This album presents 5 songs...well, in fact the first and the last song "Pigson the wing" part I and II(the guitar in this songs is almoust the same as in WYWH...) could be count as one song split in two. Howerver this ones only work as an instruduction and as a closer to the album, the so to say "real" songs are the three in between...Dogs, Pigs (three different ones) and Sheep. Dogs is the longest of them all, a sort of epic suite. It has got some of Gilmour best solos. Pigs is ok, nothing spectacular. Sheep is probably the best song, strangly fast for Floyd it also has some nice guitar work. This is the most melodic song of the album.

All in all the album is quite good...it also did great in the charts...it sold around 4 million albums in his days!!! Although that is not the most important thing...the important thing is the quality of the music...and the quality is pretty high...As always the art cover is excellent (a trademark in Floyd´s albums)...not a prog classic in my ears, although not that far behind...

"Animals" in an album based loosely around George Orwell's classic novel Animal Farm which is an interpretation of the Russian Revolution. The story is put into a context we can all understand and for each key character in the real story there is a coinciding one. The book was looked on as a joke when it was first released and no one took is seriously. However over time it has become one of the essential books of 20th centaury. I read the book because it was one the school assigned us to read, and I had heard bad things about it. People said it was boring and stupid, I however read the book in one day and then grew very interested in the "real" story. It is a good book and I found it to be a good read, although I was a bit confused first time I read it.

Now the album Animals is basically a very loose around the concept of Animal Farm and I'm not quite sure where it refers specifically to the novel. The easiest identifiable song with direct influence from the book is Pigs, who in the book were the corrupt people taking advantage of "animalism" as it is called in the novel. Pigs, by the way is an excellent song, a very progressive one with great synthesizers and guitar solos, particularly towards the end of the song.

The album openers and closers are very dynamic songs which are simple acoustic songs running for little more than a minute but, but are still songs. In the album cover there can be seen an inflatable pig flying around in the background over a factory. Perhaps this implies that modern industry came with the Russian Revolution and destroyed the old style of farming. As you can see there are many meanings that can be deduced from Animals.

If you ever wondered why only farm yard animals were included on this album, then hopefully now you will realise why that is. Dogs is perhaps the best song from Animals and it doesn't seem to take anything from the book. The last three minutes of the song is among my favourite music Pink Floyd ever wrote, I congratulate the band on this song. The end of the song is rather sad really. Cloking at around 17 minutes this is a true prog epic.

Sheep sounds very similar to pigs and lots of experimentation with synthesizers took place in this song I believe. Sheep is another impressive Floyd song and it talks of the dangers of being a sheep and the hardships they face. There is great line where Roger Water sings "follow the leader" and those three words characterize the animals so well.

1.Pigs on the Wing pt.1 (4/5) 2.Dogs (5/5) 3.Pigs (Three Different Types) (5/5) 4.Sheep (4/5) 5.Pigs on the Wing pt.2 (4/5) Total = 22 divided by 5 (number of Songs) = 4.4 Excellent addition to any prog music collection

Animals is a very healthy 4 stars from me, it deserves such a high rating (which has already been taken care of) as it is an excellent album and it gets the mind racing and guessing as to what it means. If you like Pink Floyd then Animals is an essential, to everyone else it is just an excellent album to have in you're collection. If you haven't read Animal Farm then I laugh at you, hahahaha, and recommend the book to you. It isn't a bad book and should only take an afternoon to read.

Animals is another transition album for Pink Floyd. Whereas Meddle marked the segue from the poppy fun of the early, Barret-influenced days to the mores erious 70s output, Animals marks the transition from Roger Waters' heavy input to his total control of the band. Lyrically, this is Pink Floyd's strongest concept, though Dark Side of the Moon has stronger individual songs. The concept draws its inspiration from George Orwell's Animal Farm. Its an entirely socio-political album about Pigs (corporate overlords and politcians), Dogs (the middle management lackeys of the Pigs), and Sheep (the "common" man who obeys the dogs and pigs). This stands as Floyd's most aggressive album; Meddle just barely bests in it heaviness.

Pigs on the Wing Part 1 starts off the album with a soft acoustic, but don't let that fool you. Apparently this and the later part 2 comprise a love song to Waters' wife in order to dillute the bleakness of the rest of the album. A nice piece, but it fails its mission to allieviate the depression.

Dogs is a Floyd classic, and Gilmour's solos throughout the song are awe-inspiring. However, the song drags between solos with Wright keyboards somehow being the only instrument playing yet you can barely hear it. Waters decided that Wright would be relegated to backup (he'd later sack the poor fellow). The lyrics are the darkest on the album.

Pigs (Three Different Ones) should in itself secure the album a place in some hall of fame. The lyrics come very close to unseating Waters' magnum opus, Time, and there are a lot more words to deal with in Pigs. Waters tears into politics, attacking censorship, corrupt CEOs, and the right-wing in general. Mason's weird percussion and Gilmour's riff hook you at the beginning and Gilmour's superb solo ends it beautifully.

Sheep is a frantic song and it's Floyd's most aggressive musically. Like Dogs, it starts and ends strong, but the middle drags as the band drops out for animal sounds.

The album closes with the second half of the love song, but there's no way to feel cheery after the barrage you've just received.

Animals is without a doubt Dave Gilmour's album musically. His domination of the album keeps Waters at bay from total control. His solos keep "Dogs" not only from being a big problem, they make the song enjoyable. Overall, this album is a Floyd classic, but it isn't quite a masterpiece.

Grade: B+

One thing about earlier Pink Floyd is they didn't rest long on their laurels before branching out into something new. After Wish You Were Here followed a similar polished, mellow mood from Dark Side Of The Moon, Animals did a U-turn and gave us something quite different and quite unlike any other Floyd album, much looser, and more aggressive with generally sparser arrangements based on cutting guitar figures. Gone are the extensive use of non-musical effects as the band consciously moved to a more direct sense of performance.

The album is mostly just three long glorious tracks, two of which had been extensively worked-out in concert for a couple of years before being recorded. The concept is thus rather an add-on afterthought, and is not perhaps one of Waters' best: the animals are metaphors for people in a similar way to George Orwells' book Animal Farm, though it isn't directly based on the book. The whole album is almost one faultless highlight, but personal favourites are Gilmour's ever changing phrasing during Pigs (Three Different Ones) [a perfect antidote to the perfectionism of the album's predecessors] and use of the voice-tube, and the anthemic crashing chords as a coda to Sheep. Brilliant. Masterpiece.

Very few bands in the music history could produce three masterpieces in a row (Genesis being one those with "Nursery", "Foxtrot" and "Selling"). So, will the Floyd achieve this challenge ? Let's see ... or hear.

This album is quite dark. Roger wrote all the lyrics and most of the music. We are already on our way to schizophrenia which will be even more explored in their next effort. David only co-wrote the music for "Dogs". For Roger, the human race is made of pigs, dogs and sheeps. "What" is he ? A pig ? A Dog ? A Sheep ?

The "animal" theme starts with "Pigs On A Wing" : just over one minute track : the acoustic guitar recalls the title track "Wish You Were Here" but since it is so short (I don't really like those ones) I can hardly be enthusiastic about this. Maybe the lead to a major diasapointment ?

Fortunately "Dogs" is a true Floyd song. A seventeen minutes great piece of music : good bass, great guitar riff and incredible melodies. The level of their earlier masterpieces, really. This song was already played during their live sets as soon as 1974 during the "Wish You Were" tour. At that time it was called "You've Got To Be Crazy".

Some sections are really reminiscent of "Shine On You". For once, the barking dog that you can notice around minute five does not annoy me like it was the case in "Seamus". Vocal parts are really brilliant. This is a very good one.

Lyrics being weird at times : "You have to be trusted by the people that you lie to, So that when they turn their backs on you, You'll get the chance to put the knife in" or

"And in the end you'll pack up and fly down south, Hide your head in the sand, Just another old man, All alone and dying of cancer". Sounds as desperate as in "My Room" from Van Der Graaf. Brrrrrr.

"Pigs" is another good song. During their live sets, a gigantic pig will virtually "fly" over the audience. Catchy melody, the rythm reminds me the one of "Money". It is rocking quite well, I must say. A bit monotonous, maybe. Great guitar again. So typical now since "Echoes". You're great David. The finale is really good : powerful and strong.

After a two minutes intro, "Sheep" really starts and is the other highlight of the album. Rythm is great. Lenght is fine. Nick is fabulous.This one is on par with "Dogs". I like it a bunch. Wright is very good (specially during the closing part). This song (as "Dogs") was already featured in their 1974 concerts. The title for it at the time was : ""Raving and Drooling" and was more extended (around sixteen minutes or so).

The album closes as it started with "Pigs On A Wing" part two. Same comment as for the intro.

Most of the songs are strongly rock oriented. Great (not the greatest) Floyd experience. I listen quite frequently to this album, and as a whole it is a quite remarkable piece of music.

During the supporting tour the Floyd will play the whole of "Animals" in a first part and the whole of WYWH in the second. Following the tracklist of the studio albums throughout the tour (no improv any longer). As far as encores are concerned, they will play "Money" (almost all the time) and "Us & Them" (as a second encore). Once they will play "Careful" (on May 9, 1977 in Oakland California). For the their last show of their second leg in North America (already called "In The Flesh") they will play a blues jam as a third encore (probably to say goodbye to America).

Two or three anecdotes from the "Animals" story :

1. The cover : Roger conceived the pig. He suggested to have it inflated and flying over Battersea Power Station. No retouching : a real one ! The day of the shoot was fantastic with a dramatic sky. The fourty feet pig long was inflated, but this took so long that it was not actually launched that day. The manager had hired a marksman with telescopic rifle to shoot down the pig if it escaped into the sky. On the second day, the manager, had decided not to hire him for the day, for economic reasons.

The inflated pig was launched into the air. Everybody was very excited... But then a violent gust of wind suddenly came out of nowhere, the pig lurched one way and then the other and then tore free of its moorings. It disappeared into the sky quickly. There was no marksman to shoot it down, there was no time to even get a photo !

The pig ascended into the flight paths of incoming jets landing at Heathrow. The Aviation Authorities took over and sent a general alert to all pilots that a forty feet long pink flying pig was on the loose in the airspace ! The pig, floated along and descended upon a rural farmers property.

The roadies rescued the pig from the farmer that night, returned it to London, did some repair so that it could be photographed the next day. It was cloudless, with a bright blue sky, but it was not very threatening...therefore the pig was layered into the final artwork from day three into the sky of day one !

A different technique could have been employed to save time, money and anxiety, but it also would have prevented a great story and good laughs.

2.The spitting incident : On July 6, in Montreal, the famous spitting incident occurred. In interviews, Waters had reported his frustration at the "meaningless ritual" of live performances, where his intensely personal songs were treated with a lack of respect by "whistling, shouting, and screaming" audiences. Finally he took an innocent fan in the front row and start spitting in his face. After Roger spat on the young man, Dave left the stage, unnoticed, slipped through the audience and made his way to the mixer, disgusted. This highlights how nice a person Roger was at the time...

It was during this tour that Roger conceived the idea of bulding a wall between himself and the audience (sounds familiar, right) ?

But let's be honest : to follow DSOTM and WYWH is a bloody complicated task. I would say that what is lacking to this album to be a masterpiece resides maybe in the fact that David was almost set aside for this effort (the best track being the one in which he is involved in the music - "Dogs").

To confirm this feeling, let's hear what Nick will say : "This was a bit of a return to the group feel, quite a cheerful session as I remember. We did it in our own studio, which we'd just built. By now Roger was in full flow with the ideas, but he was also really keeping Dave down, and frustrating him deliberately."

Rick will also feel that his time is (almost over) : "I didn't like a lot of the writing on Animals, but unfortunately I didn't have anything to offer. I think I played well but I remember feeling not very happy or creative, partly because of problems with my marriage. This was the beginning of my writer's block."

The album will climb to Nr. 2 in the UK and Nr. 3 in the US. Four stars.

To open i'd like to quote Will Romano from his book "Mountans Come Out Of The Sky". "While FLOYD clearly still owed a tremendous debt to Barrett (if, for nothing else, the concept of madness and the strain of madness being shoved under Waters' nose as a viable theme for rock records), the band increasingly became a vehicle for Waters' repressed anger, misanthropy, and childhood scars.This was never more apparent than on the next three albums released by the band-1977's "Animals",1979's "The Wall" and 1983's "The Final Cut". At it's most basic, "Animals", written nearly entirely by Waters(perhaps informed by George Orwell), divides the human race into these classifications: pigs (the priviledged and ruling classes), dogs (the rebels, mavericks, hunters) and sheep(everyday people just trying to get through their lives). By personifying animals, it forces us to see human behaviour and archetypal human personality traits more objectively." It should be mentioned that Gilmour and Wright didn't view mankind with the same kind of cynicism.

So like the last two albums Waters takes care of the lyrics while Gilmour creates the music. Usually Wright helped Gilmour with the music but not here as it becomes the Waters and Gilmour show. Two of the tracks on this album were originally written for the "Wish You Were Here" album but left off. "Raving And Drooling" became "Sheep" and "Gotta Be Crazy" became "Dogs". It's intersting from the original titles how much more "Wish You Were Here" could have been about Syd. Instead the music industry became a target for Waters' and the bands wrath, while on "Animals" Waters takes a shot at society.This would be the first album not recorded at Abbey Road Studios by the band, instead they did it in their own studio.

"Pigs On The Wing 1" and "Pigs On The Wing 2" are the bookends of this scathing work, and almost seem to have been added to soften the blow of this bitter reality or to encourage us that as long as we have someone to love and who loves us then all is well. Waters apparently originally wrote this song as a love song to his wife, and except for the song titles they seem out of place except for the above reasons. "Dogs" is one of my favourite PINK FLOYD songs and it's hard for me to give a reason why. I just love it. I do really like it when the song slows down and you can hear the dogs barking and then Gilmour's guitar just soars. Gilmour sings on the first half of this tune and Waters the second half.

"Pigs(Three different ones)" specifically points out three "pigs"(real people) and really rakes them through the coals. The vocal melody with the guitar is catchy. I'm reminded of THE BEATLES when the vocals are distorted. Some great scorching guitar from Gilmour before this one is over. "Sheep" has a jazzy intro before it gets uptempo with intense vocals.

This album certaily doesn't have the uplifting and emotional moments that "Dark Side Of The Moon","Wish You Were Here" or "The Wall" has, but it is still an amazing record in it's own way. I'm surprised at how abrasive the instrumental work can be as Gilmour really made the kind of music to suit Waters' lyrics. This has perhaps their most famous cover art next to "The Dark Side Of The Moon". Highly recommended of course. This is a top three FLOYD album for me with "Meddle" (second) and my favourite "Dark Side Of The Moon".

The message is still relevant today.

Pink Floyd complete their artistic plateau (along with WYWH) with a haunting album that I'm sure is not in favor with many high ranking execs. I often wonder why it is Dark Side is so revered, at least among prog fans, because this album is far "proggier" and more intellectually stimulating. But alas, there's something more important to know: David Gilmour gives a guitar performance of a lifetime, with patterns and arrangements that are not only challenging, but emotionally moving and deep.

The bookends of the album are really just entry and exit barriers to the madness within. As has been explained by others, the symbolism of the album, while a bit simple, is really fitting and highlights some rather depressing aspects of life. My personal favorites are Dogs and Pigs, but that is not to say that Sheep is not an excellent track as well.

All in all an album you must own, an album that was unexpected by many, considering the success of the two previous albums. But Animals might just be better than WYWH (and it is certainly more gripping than Dark Side). And the power in the lyrics is just as powerful today as it was in '77.

Hey, it's an interesting concept and we could talk about what dogs and sheep and pigs are 'til the cows come home, but I want to talk about the music.

This gets 4 stars, by the way, and it's really close to 5.

Animals and Wish You Were Here are cursed by being sandwiched in between two masterpieces, to wit, Dark Side of the Moon and The Wall. WYWH seems to me to be largely an attempt at an FM friendly album. Pink Floyd discovered that they could write FM friendly music and still stay true to their sound on DSOTM, and WYWH looks back to that.

Animals is very different. Animals looks back to their older experimental, space rock days, with lots of extended passages of spacey riffs against a throbbing bass background. I love the older, space oriented Floyd, and it's wonderful to hear them returning to that, albeit with a new sense of style and taste that elevates the music to a higher level. At the same time, parts of this album really foreshadow what we can expect in The Wall. Gilmour's guitar licks, the catchier (but still Floyd) parts of songs that are actually songs, the general pessimism all look forward to what Floyd would be doing on the next album. If they changed the lyrics and cut out the space passages, nothing here would sound out of place on The Wall.

So it's a great album that looks back to Floyd's past and foreshadows Floyd future. Why doesn't it get 5 stars?

My answer to that is that the two elements aforementioned just don't quite gel together. Floyd tries really hard to make it work, but the space passages seem too long and the song passages seem to change the mood. This is noticeable on all three of the long songs. In addition, I just don't find Pigs as enjoyable as Dogs and Sheep.

So it's a great album that every prog fan would enjoy and it's a must have for anybody interested in Piink Floyd, but it just doesn't make it as high as the masterpiece level.

Never has it felt so good to be depressed.

"you have to be trusted by the people that you lie to, so that when they turn their backs on you, you'll get the chance to put the knife in.."

Musically this is perhaps their most satisfying moment for those who like harder rock. Everyone in the band is simply in top form. Roger's words are pure dark poetry, Dave's playing has never been better and the bleak photography and cover art fit the music perfectly.

It's funny how punk rock claimed to hate Pink Floyd. When you read the lyrics to Animals, the truth is that punk and Floyd were allies philosophically at this moment, separated only by age, wealth, and fashion. Punk should have celebrated Animals as it is one big hearty F-YOU to the Establishment.

"And it's too late to lose the weight you used to need to throw around...so have a good drown as you go down, alone, dragged down by the stone.."

"Dogs" is one of the most important epics in the Floyd arsenal and laments the selling out of the human soul for money and power. It pulls no punches as it describes in blissful bloody gore how aspiring-for-power man will work himself to death ("sleep on your toes"), wear the conformist garb ("work on points for style"), lie, backstab, sell out his friends, and convince himself that everyone's as morally bankrupt as he is so what difference does it make. He ends up sad and alone, sinking like a stone, dying. He was "fitted with collar and chain, breaking away from the pack, only a stranger at home, ground down in the end, found dead on the phone." "Dogs" is also one of the most complete and satisfying musical pieces delivered by the Floyd with great depth and imagination.

He then goes after the Pigs with equal ferocity. And then after us, the Sheep, who put up with being abused and exploited. We, who pass the time pretending the danger isn't real, who follow the leader into the valley of steel. Or will we rise in revolution instead?

"So I don't feel alone or the weight of the stone, now that I've found somewhere safe to bury my bone."

It's quite stunning to behold the series of achievements these guys created during this time, while at their musical peak. Animals is a grim spin to be sure but one that is a favorite to most Floyd fans. Soon the band would begin to fray and the many fans would divide into the two Floyd factions, those who love David's undeniable performance talents and those who relish Roger's dark songwriting and stinging humor. Animals was perhaps the last moment where the band seemed to be on the same page and it is a classic that should be in your collection if it isn't yet.

So, how do you top two consecutive masterpieces (The Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here) that will forever leave their marks on progressive rock? Easy. You just make another one. And that's exactly what Pink Floyd did with Animals, a musical Orwellian experience where everybody is divided up into Dogs, Pigs, and Sheep. It paints such a bleak picture, but boy does this one get your brain going. Indeed, if this hasn't happened already, the intricacies of this concept would make a fascinating subject for an academic thesis.

Musically, Animals is the most energetic collection of songs Pink Floyd ever made and probably the most progressive work of their long catalogue of studio releases. Lyrically, Roger Waters hit his peak with this album. Waters also shows much improvement in his vocals here too, as he takes the lead on most sections of the album. Wright contributes many lush synths, though not as forward in the mix as on Wish You Were Here. Gilmour is still the guitar god as usual.

Is this better than Wish You Were Here? Lyrically, yes. Musically, maybe, maybe not. One thing Animals lacks that Wish You Were Here has is memorable melodies. What Animals has more of is raw energy and a more thought out concept. After many years of listening to these two masterpieces, I still lean towards Wish You Were Here. But Animals is still an essential must-have and in my opinion is better than the classic The Dark Side of the Moon. Definitely a five-star effort and probably one of the top 10 or top 20 greatest progressive rock albums ever released.

Prog for the sake of prog, and thats not a bad thing. My love for Floyd has died over the past three years, but it's hard to deny the innovativeness given in this album. Very experimental and very creative, and with lyrics I could connect with better than any other floyd album behind the wall. This album is probably the most accesible than most of the ther five song or less mega albums of the seventies, so if your new to prog, this album will definately get you into the whole epic song thing which may be progressive musics most beloved attribute. After their so called "masterpiece" Wish you were here (and many know I disagree majorly), the band tours and apparently loses a couple of synthesizers, cause there is a huge loss of synth from WYWH to this one. Also while on break RogerWaters takes up the book animal farm, and puts in lyrics the different animals expressed in the anti Stalinist book, and their attitudes and social status. And here they are...

The opener and closer songs are both only a minuete long, acuostic, and are on the animal farm subject about shelter from the pigs. Pretty and sweet, but nothing compared to the upcoming songs. Dogs is supposed to be the major song of the album, barely under eighteen minuetes and filled with Gilmour flying solo's. This song also strays from the given concept the most, and basically talks about the abuse dogs get, especially on the farm. While the beggining and ending parts of this composition are excellent, there is a part in the middle section where for about five minuetes the whole song drops to a quite mellotron and Waters trying to make a dogs barking noise on his bass, this gets annoying and very tedious very fast. I'm not really sure I believe this song is the centerpiece of the album, Gilmours acoustic strumming is very cool and Waters lyrics are at their best, but there is a lack of emotion in this song that dosent hit the peak like the next song. Pigs is my favirote song for many different reasons, the personal attacks, the experimaentalness, and one of Gilmours finest solo's at the end! The song starts with really cool keyboards and some awseome bass fills, then quickly picks up into an upbeat rant about the abusive control of the pigs (which is a definate animal farm reference) through the late seventies world leaders; The president, the queen, and the virgin mary. The song goes into an awesome jam session after the first two versus starting with a simple guitar riff, then builds with Roger on a talk box making some disgusting pig squeel noises... and it rocks! Afterwards the most angry verse, then Gilmour explodes and rips for the past minuete or two. Sheep is cool musically, but very creepy lyrically, with the talk of the mindless following sheep going to the slaughter, then lashing back at the sheppard and running free, but still being under the reighn of the pigs and the Dogs. One downside to this song is that it's easily the most prevelant God basher of any Floyd song, and easily goes right up there with Jethro Tulls blasphemies. Musically, it starts with some smooth electric piano, the bursts into awesome guitar riffing and vocals that phase into synthesizer. At the end of the song Gilmour go's onto an awesome riff, while Mason shows that he is not actually a drum machine. The album ends with pigs on the wing part two.

There are some disapointments brought on by this album of epics, the lack of synthesizers, the God bashing. Both of these are what convince to give this album what it's rating is. Musically the band is probably at it's highest peak, if you want Gilmoure, you want Dogs, if you want Waters you go for Pigs. Of course the other members of the band stand pretty firm as a rythym section, but hell, this is prog standing out just a little on three ten minuete plus songs will not kill you! Also if you are a veteran of prog, and for some strange reason you do not own this album, you probably shouldnt set your sites high for high complexity and serious virtusoness, like I said, this is a good album for begginers, and after you grow more into prog, you will find the album a bit more repetitive and stagnant. As for the first year or so of this album...

4 stars

PINK FLOYD at their most progressive - and best.

Animals is a concept album centering around societal castes with dogs representing money hungry businessmen, pigs representing politicians and sheep representing the masses who follow (or so I'm led to believe. And so the format on the album consists of 3 epic songs (with an intro and outro) dealing with each animal. The music itself is quite spacey, surely the most space rock floyd album incorporating delay, reverb and effects in abundance (my personal favourite is the vocoded dog barks in 'Dogs'.

All 3 main songs are fantastically written, 'Dogs' is my personal favourite song on the album, it's quite dark and mysterious and the time seems to fly by, it's hard to believe that it's a 17 minute song. Pigs is a more traditional floyd song with more of a bluesy groove invoking shades of 'welcome to the machine' from their previous album. Sheep rounds out the album with a driving rhythm and is very climactic with some very dark areas in the middle (especially for floyd).

From a progressive point of view this is easily the best album from PINK FLOYD, an essential album for any progressive rock collection.

Any rock fan can recognize, and probably sing-along to "Time", "Welcome to the Machine", or "Another Brick in the Wall", but I feel that those who have discovered and understand "Animals" to be the real lucky ones-- because this might just be Floyd's smartest and most successfully ambitious album ever. It's very different than the other "big" ones, featuring tons of bluesy guitar, a less "open" feel to the instrumental sections, and razor-sharp lyrics of a darkly satirical (and cynically revealing) nature. Song structure is much swifter and more complex than the vast organ tapestries found in its predecessor "WYWH". There are few radio moments, but an endless demonstration of the band's songwriting prowess.

Not to be missed by those who haven't discovered it yet.

Songwriting: 4 Instrumental Performances: 3 Lyrics/Vocals: 3 Style/Emotion/Replay: 4

Listening to this album I get the distinct feeling that not only was the band starting to fracture from the inside but that they also had no desire to attempt to reproduce the same meticulously nurtured sounds that characterized their previous two wildly popular releases. Despite the fact that it still took seven months to record, there's a palpable back-to-the-basics flavor to the proceedings that gives it an up-front, immediate and somewhat stark personality. All of this adds up to an album that doesn't sound like anything else in their catalogue, for better or for worse.

"Pigs on the Wing, Pt. 1" defines the no-frills approach that permeates the project with Roger Waters singing dispassionately over a folksy acoustic guitar that "if you didn't care what happened to me/and I didn't care for you" we'd all be at the mercy of the ruthless money merchants and, if we're not vigilant and courageous, we'll be run over. The sarcastic lyrics throughout the album are painted with a brush broad enough to allow us to interpret and recognize them as Roger's overwhelming distrust of both the music industry and society as a whole.

The 17-minute "Dogs" shows the group working as a tight unit, despite the well-documented tensions and infighting. It's the kind of music they could have easily recreated playing either a one-nighter in a small Irish pub or in a football stadium. David Gilmour's rhythmic guitar strumming sets the running pace as Richard Wright's thin organ tones give the song a rare fragility that offsets Waters' ruthless, mongrel-eat-mongrel commentary on the realities of climbing the corporate ladder starting from street level. "You gotta be able to pick out the easy meat with your eyes closed" and "strike when the moment is right without thinking," he preaches. Once you get your paw in the conglomerate door you then have to "work on points for style" and gain the trust of "the people you lie to." Gilmour provides unadorned guitar harmonies and a biting lead before Roger describes in ghastly detail the end result of living such a selfish life when one turns out to be "just another sad old man/all alone and dying of cancer" who discovers that it's "too late to loose the weight/you used to need to throw around." One of the most memorable moments occurs when he sings the line "dragged down by the stone" and his final word turns into a loop that evolves into less of a human utterance and more like a wailing siren that echoes inside a dreamy synthesizer sequence featuring electronically- filtered barking/howling dogs. After a return to the opening themes Waters relates that he must "stay awake, gotta try and shake off this creeping malaise" for "if I don't stand my own ground/how can I find my own way out of this maze?" The song ends with a repeating, labored, heavy riff where the vocals lament those who have been taken in by the hollow promises of the doomed road to riches. This epic tune is a brutal yet brilliant indictment of the industrial age.

The problem presented to radio programmers by this record was that they had one of the biggest groups in the world giving them three long cuts to play for their listeners. The one that they eventually put into heavy rotation was "Pigs (Three different ones)," a not-nearly-as-poetic diatribe against those self-righteous individuals who feel it's their God-commanded duty to tell the rest of the world what to do, feel and think. Wright supplies a memorable organ intro punctuated by surreal pig grunts and Roger's deft bass lines before Nick Mason kicks the band into a semi-funky groove. (I must register a tiny complaint here. I can't help but envision Christopher Walken barging into the studio, pleading for "more cowbell" because it gets to be annoying after a while.) Portraying these know-it-all swine as "well-heeled big wheels," "bus stop rat bags" and "house proud town mice," Waters calls them all out as the charades they are in the most direct and blunt of terms. Next there's a great, slow-to-build guitar solo section where David's sow-like, squealing voice-box effect adds to the rich aroma rising from the musical sty. A reprise of the original arrangement ensues where Roger reminds us that "you gotta stem the evil tide" before Gilmour finally opens up a large can of whup-ass and lets his fierce electric guitar escalate the song to a more forceful and driving level.

Barnyard noises lead into "Sheep" which features Richard's jazzy Rhodes piano stylizations layered over a pulsating bass line as the tune morphs into a rocker when the rest of the band joins in. Here the vocals are quite alarmist in their intensity and stress level as Waters warns the vulnerable, gullible public that "you better watch out/there may be dogs about/I've looked over Jordan and I've seen/things are not what they seem." His sly twisting of the famous passage from Psalms is not only genius but effectively unnerving, as well. "He maketh me to hang on hooks in high places/he converteth me to lamb cutlets/for lo, he hath great power and great hunger/when cometh the day we lowly ones/through quiet reflection and great dedication/master the art of karate/lo, we shall rise up/and then we'll make the buggers' eyes water." He goes on to briefly describe a spirited revolt by "demented avengers" that, when all is said and done, doesn't change anything at all. Musically there's a spacey segment where the earlier "siren" resurfaces for a few bars, then David lashes out with angry guitar spasms followed by eerie synthesizer wisps performed over bleating sheep sounds. My favorite part of the entire album occurs when Gilmore delivers gloriously triumphant descending power chords as the "victorious" sheep parade over the horizon. Beautiful irony.

"Pigs on the Wing Pt. 2" brings things full circle as Roger enlightens us to what is most important after all. "You know I care what happens to you/and I know that you care for me," he croons over simple acoustic guitar chords. The message of love thy neighbor is still valid over three decades later and will be a million years hence.

It's much too easy to criticize this album as not being as compelling as "Dark Side of the Moon" or "Wish You Were Here" but that wouldn't be fair. The group was suffering from the inevitable downside of worldwide fame and fortune and that's a pressure that few mortals ever have the experience of knowing. It certainly affected Pink Floyd. Lyrically "Animals" ranks with their best work while musically it comes off like the collective creation of a band that just wanted to be a combo again and, in that humble but admirable regard, they succeeded. 3.8 stars.

'Animals' was so nearly a breathtakingly brilliant album. It fails to live up to its potential because, in the end, it is performed not by PINK FLOYD, but by ROGER WATERS and his amazing backing band.

WATERS kept the band in ideas from this point on - and, indeed, had been the major creative force behind 'Dark Side of the Moon' and 'Wish You Were Here'. Without him the full power of PINK FLOYD would never have been unleashed. But his creative skills were not matched by management skills, and he sowed the seeds of the band's destruction between 1977 and 1980 by alienating WRIGHT and GILMOUR. Why on earth he thought he was talented enough to sing the songs he wrote is a mystery of the age: his limited range and nasal, flat delivery makes for uncomfortable listening. I often wonder what some of the latter FLOYD material would have been like had WRIGHT provided more vocals. From being PINK FLOYD's 'go-to' singer in the early 70's, he is virtually absent on this album, and would become the first casualty of WATERS' takeover.

And what of ROGER WATERS' creativity? I find it ironic at best and hypocritical at worst that the man who, as NICK MASON said 'struggled to modify what had been a democratic band into one with a single leader' (Mason, Inside Out, p247) would use his expanded power to write concept albums lampooning the dictatorial and fascist behaviour of others. For this reason above all others I have never been able to take the sentiments expressed in 'Animals' seriously.

Only WATERS could have come up with such a daring, in-your-face concept, simple song titles based on Orwell's 'Animal Farm' in which - take note, ROGER - power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely - and then spoil it be taking too much of it on his own shoulders. PINK FLOYD worked best as a democracy, where the melodic talents of GILMOUR and WRIGHT could counterbalance WATERS' hard-edged audacity. Compositionally this record simply doesn't stack up against its predecessors: there's less actual music in this album than in anything since 'Ummagumma'.

So, what of the music? Three enormous, sprawling songs bookended by two guitar pieces, the tune for the latter freely liberated from the song 'Wish You Were Here'. Supposed love songs, they are rendered implausibly ugly by WATERS' voice. 'Dogs' is drawn out beyond the capacity of the music. The middle section, after the 'stone' echo', goes on far too long: unlike the space-rock of 'Shine on You Crazy Diamond' this bores rather than uplifts the listener. This is because it exists to amplify the concept rather than as good music. There's a piece of pure magic spliced awkwardly into the song: I think of this piece, starting at 3:40, as the 'GILMOUR parcel', a song fragment of real power dropped in here with no connection to the rest of the music. As powerful as it is, it loses meaning in this context - and, to make matters worse, is repeated verbatim near the end of the song. Other aspects of the song are indeed powerful. The vocals and guitar are excellent, the keyboards lush, and both WATERS and MASON take the rhythm section far beyond where they've been in previous albums. That's the irony of this song and this record - there's real progression here, but the in-your-face concept makes it difficult to appreciate. The song ends with an 'Eclipse'-like climax, but by this time I've generally lost any emotional connection to the music.

'Pigs (Three Different Ones)' is simply an insult to the intelligence. Here WATERS rails against individuals with his trademark hammerhead subtlety, and misses each time. The point about Mary Whitehouse, for example, was precisely that she was not a charade, but a real force of her time, irrespective of how unpalatable her views were. I do enjoy the way the band makes 'pig music': the guitars wallow, the bass is fat, even the keyboards are heavy and porcine. Trouble is, after the two opening verses, the song itself wallows in its own waste for three or four minutes, missing the chance for a classic FLOYD build. It's never a good sign when a song marks time, only to return to the third verse, same as the first two. And then, completely out of place, comes a guitar solo like a thunderstorm, backed by WATERS' rising and falling bass line, and suddenly the song wakes from its self-indulgent slumber. What could have been!

'Sheep' is the masterpiece on this record. It is so much cleverer lyrically and musically than the other songs. From WATERS' trademark rumbling bass, this song has an urgency missing in the rest of the sprawl. The effect of fading WATERS' vocal into a sound stab works wonderfully well, and the song never loses that momentum. If only it could have finished with the solo from the last song, we'd have a complete winner.

'Animals' heralds an angrier, more direct PINK FLOYD, mainly because an angrier, more direct person had taken control of the band - and the rest of the band were happy to let him do the work. The decline and fall of PINK FLOYD, when it came, was swift, but we only see signs of it here.

At least it wasn't about the war.

In my review on DSotM I stated that I consider myself a Pink Floyd fan at least for a part of their history. Best albums to me are Wish you were here and Animals and I rated Wywh 4 stars although it was actually rounded down from 4.5. So if I really am (a bit of) a fan I should at least give one of their albums 5 stars I feel. So that's going to be this one. Animals is my true favourite anyway so I'm ok with that.

Why is it my favourite ? I like the compositions extremely much. This is real symphonic prog to me, at it's best probably. The three large tracks (because the other two are just poor short ones) are the real album to me. Very varied songs, good vocal parts alternated with great instrumental fragments and the songs really progress smoothly. I have listened to them almost a hundred times now in all those (25) years but I can't get enough of them.

All 3 tracks are 5 star-efforts in my book so the album is easily rewarded in the same way.

Floyd have already given us Piper, Saucerful, Dark Side... and Wish You Were Here, and still continue to blow our minds with this amazing album, 'Animals'. During 1973, the band reached almost unfathomable success with 'Dark Side of the Moon', and then decided to advance deeper into the prog portal by creating such highly inspired instrumental/lyrical displays like WYWH, and 'Animals'. That being said, the core of this album was composed during 1974, and did appear on several bootlegs (yes, guilty..) as 'You Gotta Be Crazy' (Dogs) and 'Raving and Drooling' (Sheep).

Central to the whole concept is Water's cynical view of the human race, likening various personalities within society to various animals via the epic compositions 'Pigs', 'Dogs', and 'Sheep'. The lyrics are hard-hitting and quite understandable. The music behind all this is not so complex, but superbly crafted and passionately performed. Wright's keys ( Mini-Moog, Fender Rhodes, Hammond, Piano, String-Synth) serve as a full sounding, symphonic back-drop to Gilmour's phenomenal guitar leads, and Waters shows his skill as a competent and able Bass player. Mason supplies the rhythmic back-bone to the whole affair. The 3 epic tracks are book-ended with 2 delicate, acoustic ballads, 'Pigs on the Wing - Parts I and II'). Yet another essential prog album.

Now we are talking, this is my favourite Floyd album by far. I'll be short here. This is the most angry album Floyd ever did. Stunning from capo al fine, Sheeps has really awesome concept and is stunning played, the rest are also very enjoyble. So the album is a concept about society, with dogs representing money and businessmen, pigs representing politicians and sheep representing the masses, the album has 3 long epics about each animal, and 2 shorter ones of course about the same animals. The album is well crafted balanced between smooth keys to angry guitars and rough voices in places. A 5 stars without hesitation. Maybe i said nothing with this rerview, but i have to wright some lines about this album because is one of my fav from the old school. Enjoy the smoothness of Pink Floyd.

As Pink Floyd dug through the years inside the human paranoia and inner issues, all beginning in the Meddle album and ending magically in The Wall (since the The Final Cut album was only bibliographic, to Roger Waters, and political, mainly critics to the world politics and political hypocrisy) and became more and more symphonic (like it or not, many floydian albums during the 70's shared characteristics with symphonic prog bands, like the album having a hole story, or being all about one theme and having increasingly classical elements), Animals was born.

Like all Pink Floyd albums from the 70's (except atom heart mother and meddle), Animals is a concept album, and by concept albums i mean albums with a central theme. Animals central theme is about the kind of people that exists on the planet: the leader that fools people (dogs), the owners of the world, or big capitalists, the military commanders and the politicians (pigs) and the ones that follows them (sheep). An interesting note is that Animals have a certain relation with the Orwels book Animal Farm.

Animals can be considered the most symphonic album of Pink Floyd, after The Wall of course, since the whole album tells that story about the resemblance of humans and animals and it has a whole connecting the three different stories, besides the long songs.

After all, the music is something you cant forget in a progressive rock album. On animals the music is becoming increasingly more guitar-centered than in the other synth/keyboard centered albuns. Also is noticeable the increasingly complexity of the songs, which, speaking of progressive rock, is not a bad thing.

overall rating: lyrics + music + theme = 4.5-5 stars

God, I am finding it VERY difficult as to what rating to give this one, and ultimately, I think five out of five stars is a very fitting one for this effort. The Floyd did better work, but not by much. The crowning achievement in Pink Floyd history as far as I am concerned is THE WALL, but trust me, folks, if you are wanting something in the same vein as their magnum opus, but something a little shorter and more direct, ANIMALS is for you.

We begin this journy with ''Pigs on the Wing Part 1'', an interesting little acoustic guitar soung which is only Roger Waters playing and singing. The tune is nice and simple, but completely misleading as to what will soon follow, because the listener is in for a special treat!

As soon as ''Pigs'' ends, ''Dogs'' begins, which starts out as a fade-in, and also the first appearance of Gilmour on guitar. This riff, which is played repeatedly as Gilmour sings the first verse, is oddly upbeat for Pink Floyd, but it just works, especial since the lyrics in this particuler entry don't necessarily scream 'happy thoughts'. Here, Waters' lyrics speak of people's need to take what they can when they can, and how the opposing forces at be lie and scam their way into having success, but in the end, it amounts to nothing, because the most important things in life were never obtained after all. I particularly like the line: ''Hide your head in the sand. Just another sad old man, all alone and dying of cancer!''.

At this point in the song, Gilmour plays arguably one of the greatest solos the guitar has ever had the pleasure of playing, once again proving (at least to me) that Gilmour is the greatest guitarist who has ever lived. At this point, the song goes into a very long, but pleasurable instrumental breakdown, yet again displaying Gilmour's genious on his instrument. Personally, I think the stuff he plays during this song is the greatest stuff ever done on a guitar, but that is probably a biased opinion, since I have clearly not heard everything done on guitar.

The song then becomes placid, and shifts gears to compliment Water's mournfull vocals, stating: ''And when you lose control, you'll reap the harvest you have sown . . . '' This is my favorite part of the track, as the melody is particularly tasty. Gilmour then harmonizes with him, and the song builds again, ending this particular section of it with a resounding climax. The final line, ''Dragged down by the stone!'' leaves a trail behind it, as the word 'stone' continues to echo throughout the next breakdown of the song for quite awhile before ultimately fading away.

During this section, we get to hear some of the first truly space-rock sounds on the album, as the synths and [%*!#]ed-out guitar truly give an out-of-this-world feel to the interlude. In the distance, we hear a collection of sound effects that are oh-so-fitting to the song, but you can find out what they are for yourself when you listen to it. Finally, the song seems to start over, with the same opening riff from before coming back into play, and the traditional verse is sung once again by Waters. This continues until the final shifting of gears within the song, and we are left listening to a series of short, similar lines of lyrics a la ''Eclipse'', backed by some truly heavy, poerfull guitar chords. The final lyric in this epic (and the best song on the album) is ''Who was dragged down by the stone?''.

There you have it; seventeen minutes and four seconds of Pink Floyd at their very best. Everything is there, trading of vocal duty between Waters and Gilmour, perfect balance of trippy ambience and straightforward rock, and no showoff-y moments from any members of the band. Really great.

''Pigs (three different ones)'' is the most 'cheeky' and aggressive of the songs in terms of the lyrics, basically slamming all of the people of importance in the world for being the way they are. This song is the most catchy and will most likely be the one to play first for the people who aren't all that familiar with this album, as it holds a sort of charm that appeals to most casual listeners. There is one profaine lyric in the song that some people may find objectional, but then again what are those people doing listening to good music anyway?

''Sheep'' - It's obvious to me what this song is about (Mindless flocking of the masses without foresight or individual thought), and the Dogs are even mentioned again, completeling the concept and confirming that all of the songs are inter-related. There is an especially nice section of this track that features a synthesized voice stating oh-so-subtly Waters' personal view on organized religion. There are certainly some of the most intense moments in Floyd history to be found in this track, including some passionate screaming from Waters, and once again some great playing from Gilmour. In all this excitement I forgot to give equal time to Wright and Mason, but trust me, they also shine very brightly on this album. Wright's real moment is during the synth breakdown of ''Dogs'', and Mason's skill is really prominent on this track. The outro riff of this song is one of my favorite moments on the album, and holds a sense of hope in it, even though the album's mood as a whole is very grim. This shows that there is indeed light at the end of the tunnel in life, and it is up to the individual to choose which way to go; toward the exit, or deeper into the darkness.

''Pigs on the Wing Part 2'' is more or less the same exact thing as part one, with only slight lyrical variation, and it works as a great way to close the album on a lighter note, which always leaves me drooling for more.

This album is Pink Floyd's second best as far as I am concerned, and it contains the least amount of filler out of any other Floyd experience. In fact, it has absolutely none to speak of. This album is what I like to think of as the appetizer before the main dish (The Wall), and it is even the very best in some people's minds. It is certainly the best Pink Floyd single album ever produced, but I have a feeling that had THE WALL not been a double album, it would be taking ANIMALS' place in that regard, at least in my mind. But overall this is a great piece of work, not to be overlooked by any progressive music fan. 5 Stars.

Dissectional.

Pink Floyd's third album in their ''classic'' era is somewhat overlooked in every circle of music other than the progressive one. As proven by this site, Proggers LOVE this album... for good reasons. Likely the least accessible of Floyd's music this one is a dark and brooding tale reflective of the time. Decidedly sticking more to the long song side of things, Floyd churns out 3 masterfully dense compositions here... each one having a life all it's own. The third (and not last) concept album in a row by the band, this album was all about the economical crisis facing Britain at the time of its release. Dividing society into three sections, Waters turns humans into Animals on this outing, asking society to look at themselves for what they've become.

DOGS is the first track up. This being the group of society that works for the upper class to enforce regulation upon the middle and lower class, the dogs are essentially the brutal taxmen of the animal world. While it would be impossible to completely dissect this track, that's the gist of it. An evil sounding track, (as is most of the album, due likely to Floyd's rebellion to punk and ''the man'') this one incorporates a lot of keys and heavy music that can really induce the 'wall of sound effect' if you're not carefully listening to it.

PIGS (THREE DIFFERENT ONES) refer to the upper class. Giving orders and getting fat the track is very representative of someone calling judgment on them and sitting back to watch the results (''haha, charade you are!'' [South Park's Eric Cartman would later quote this line for those who don't already know]). Another one of Floyd's rocky tracks along with all the other material on the album, this one is definitely a keeper.

Coming near the end is the bombastic SHEEP. This is, of course, the lower and middle class who must be herded if they are achieve anything. If there is any kind of storyline on this album this is where the heaviest plot twist lies (''Have you read the news? The dogs are dead!'').

Of course, those aren't the only songs on the album... the 3 minutes of bookeneding PIGS ON THE WING are rather pleasant with their soothing vocals and acoustic guitar, but nothing to write home about. Still a good intro and outro it really seems like Floyd wanted to take everything that they did on Wish... and invert it. Even the cover is much darker than it's predecessor.

Other than that there's not much to say about the album that hasn't already been said.

Everyone knows about the crazy (marketing scheme?) incident that saw the photoshoot of the album cover go terribly wrong and resulted in the band chasing a giant inflated pig around town. Most everyone also knows that the idea for The Wall would come from the tour for this album when Roger Waters would spit on one of the fans tring to climb on stage. As a rock star, he was becoming distant from his fans... almost building a wall between him and them. Bam, a concept album was born.

Like my other Pink Floyd experiences, this one also has a story to go with the unforgettable first time I listened to it. I bought this one and Obscured By Clouds at the same time, they were on a deal so it was the perfect chance to get them both. A bunch of friends were hanging out in a little hick town called Lantzville (our towns were in a sort of perpetual war) that I used to live a 5 minute walk from and so I trucked over there with discs in hand. Needless to say, the first time I listened to the disc I could not fathom the length of the songs. Listening to the different parts of DOGS alone I thought that the album was moving along until the end of the track when I thought the album had almost come to a close when, hey, that was only the end of the first (real) song! So needless to say... we spent a good long time enjoying the album and playing Magic: The Gathering on my friend's orientally themed kitchen table (don't rub it in too much now).

The last /really/ Pink Floyd album as Roger would do a complete take over after this (even if there's rumors of him re-recording some of Gilmour's parts on this album because he ''didn't like them'') this one is a masterpiece like it's older brothers and deserves all 5 stars that it sometimes doesn't receive from other critical sources. Essential... just don't expect to ''get it'' after one listen... this thing is DENSE.

After they had released two of the most commercially successful albums in rock history, Pink Floyd seemed to be treading water with ANIMALS. The multi-coloured world of DARK SIDE and WISH was replaced with a grimmer, more austere, guitar and vocal dominated approach. 'Pigs', the first song on ANIMALS' original B-side (with its opening apparently 'borrowed' from Dutch band Focus), was easily the least adventurous tune the Floyd had recorded ever since the much underrated OBSCURED BY CLOUDS. Whenever 'Dogs' (ANIMALS' longest track) slowed down and the band settled into the kind of steady, foursquare tempo that had blighted too many of their earlier albums, you felt they were merely marking time.

But oh, how gorgeous were those FAST bits from 'Dogs'! Their lyrics were probably the most memorable Roger Waters had ever written, and the way he sang them... you couldn't deny the power! To top it all, Gilmour illustrated them with some of his angriest, most masterful guitar solos. (I couldn't tell you how often I played air guitar to that particular track!) As for the album's remaining tunes... We all agreed 'Sheep' was a near-masterpiece (a shame it really took you no further than the second half of 'Shine on You Crazy Diamond'...) while 'Pigs on the Wing' (Pts. I & II) sounded wonderfully melancholic but slight.

Nowadays, if I ever listen to ANIMALS, it's strictly for 'Dogs'; Waters' bitter sarcasm seems as appealing as ever. But when that annoying bit with the barking and the old-fashioned string synthesizer comes on, I reach for the fast forward button.

This is the Pink Floyd album that pretty much slid right by me back in the day. 1977 was not really a great year for some British psych proggers past their prime to be putting out a new record, and surely not a record where they hadn’t exactly gone to a whole lot of trouble to come up with something new and wild to attract folk’s attention like ‘Dark Side of the Moon’ and ‘Wish You Were Here’ had done. To be fair this album didn’t sound a whole lot either of those albums, but the difference was primarily that it wasn’t as distinctive and original and vibrant as either of them either. The competition was stiff in 1977 with punk capturing a lot of young kid’s imagination and angst, disco giving the vapid airheads something shiny to stare at, and New Wave blurring the lines between the two by giving punkers something to do after rehab.

Pink Floyd had anger and anti-establishment themes as well, but theirs were more cerebral than Blondie and more philosophical than Johnny Rotten. The combination didn’t work for all of the band’s hard- core fans. While a lot of people demonize Roger Waters’ growing influence on the band, I kind of wonder what would have happened to them if ‘The Wall’ hadn’t followed this album and been such a logical progression both musically and lyrically. That combined with the massive promotional campaigns for the album and movie really forestalled Pink Floyd’s slide off the top of the mountain by probably a good ten years. If ‘The Wall’ hadn’t happened then ‘The Final Cut’ wouldn’t have happened, and if that hadn’t then it’s unlikely the remnants of the once-dominant band wouldn’t have sucked out one more sip at the well with ‘A Momentary Lapse of Reason’. And that would have meant the demise of Pink Floyd on the heels of ‘Wish You Were Here’, with ‘Animals’ being a whimper instead of a bang, especially knowing that ‘Animals’ was the band’s lowest-selling album in six years until ‘The Wall’ pulled it through by generating over half the album’s sales after it had already left the charts.

Anyway, my opinion only. I like the album and the music is known to just about every proghead so in some respects it’s essential since if you don’t know this album then the last decade of Floyd’s existence is lost on you. But you don’t rate an album based on its historical significance, or at least you shouldn’t. So musically I have to say that this is a three star record, one that combines some of the social misanthropy toward certain subsets of society that ‘Wish You Were Here’ had, with the philosophical detachment of ‘The Wall’ and just a touch of the musical consistency of ‘Meddle’. A little of all those things but nothing much on its own. I rarely listen to this album any more, and truth be told listened to it very little back then. Spring was coming when this hit the stores in 1977, Frampton was on the radio, disco hot pants were tighter than the year before, and there were just too many things going on out in the sunshine to get caught up in the institutional angst of one Mr. Roger Waters. There would be time for that as the decade drew to a close, but that’s a different album and a different story.

peace

Rating between 3,5 to 4 stars, Pink Floyd´s Animal was the right album at the right time. Although I cannot say this is a ´typical´ PF CD, it is nevertheless VERY good. Certainly the band was sensing the winds of change and they were bold enough to change. It would be much more comfortable and easy for them to just follow the path The Dark Side Of The Moon and Wish You Were Here opened. Fortunatly they knew it better. The punks may have aimed at PF as their main target for what they called ´boring old farts´. But the band didn´t take notice and their survived the late 70´s unscathered (what can not be said of many other rock acts, big or not so big). Besides, this album is evertyhing but boring.

Animals proved that Pink Floyd could tackle darker, down to earth issues, with a rockier sound, and still come out sounding as pure Floyd. I remember when this album was released and the controversity it aroused. Oppotunism? No, because it stood well the test of time and I rate Dogs as one of their biggest classics. it certainly was a very well timed album, a semi-blueprint that would lead them to greater success with The Wall, some two and a half years after.

Certainly it caught fans by surprise: the music was quite heavy (for PF standards) and the lyrics were much less spacey. they dealt with what was happening in England and much of the world at the time. It was a remarckable piece of work. But they risked a lot. Fortunatly the album was a hit (albeit a smaller one than the two previous) and the tour drove packed houses. I saw them live in Anheim in 77, it was the first time I saw such a big name live. It was thirlling!

Although I still think the production was not as good as their earlier two albums, I think it was right for the time. The dominance of Roger Waters is quite evident here, and it would doomed the band some years afterwords, but here it worked well, even at the expense of some keyboards and guitar trademarks.

Not the best album for a newbie, I guess, And yet a fine record that every PF fan must have. Different, dense, dark and absolutely great!

Pink Floyd's 'Animals' is their second mainstream bluesrock infused symphonic progrock album, right after 'Wish You Were Here'. By now all sixties psychedelic charm is replaced by a disciplined and rather cold production that does sound rather good on a high-fi set. The short opening 'Pigs on the Wings' is symptomatic for the psychedelic preacher-like persona Roger Waters would pick for himself. The opening chords of 'Dogs' have a mystical charm about them and this section will prove to be the best the first side of the record has to offer. The rest of the song has some good synth and modernized bluesrock sections, but ends up not delivering on its promise. The whole 'Who was born in a house full of pain'-section is rather blunt in my opinion. On side two 'Pigs (Three different ones)' is one of the weakest tracks the band recorded in the seventies. To me it sounds like an awful reworking of 'Inside the Machine', which was also based on the same two-chord pattern. The ten minutes of 'Sheep' prove to be the highlight of the album; a strong and exciting space-rock song with a great instrumental section. In some way a good follow-up of what was established on the innovative 'One of These Days', back in 1971. Also a track that gets a spin once in a while on classic rock radio stations and will likely be the best song of that particular hour. As a whole this proved to be an lp I could give away to a friend who was quite happy with it, with me having not a single feeling of remorse. On the next album 'The Wall' the band (or rather Roger Waters) would find new song formats, atmospheres and lyrical ideas, which would prove much needed to regain my interest in Pink Floyd's music.

A quite different animal

Animals is in my opinion the first true Prog rock album Pink Floyd ever did. Meddle only had one really progressive song and Dark Side Of The Moon and Wish You Were Here were still quite Psychedelic albums, rarely breaking away from traditional song structures. And also subsequent albums like The Wall had a more New Wave-ish sound to my ears.

David Gilmour is great on this album, as is Richard Wright. This is really a band effort despite the fact that Waters wrote almost all the material. A favourite moment is the guitar solos towards the end of Dogs with the keyboards and acoustic guitars backing up. It sounds great!

Much ink has been spilt on this album so I will not say very much. Great concept, great music - in my opinion the best Pink Floyd album (at least until the excellent Divisnion Bell)

Excellent addition to your Prog collection.

If there is one Pink Floyd album that can be called true and pure rock this is Animals!All other Pink Floyd albums are not exactly rock in its real meaning.They are perfect,but they are not rock.They are strange mixture of blues,psychedelia,country,electronic and so on.And that's why if you want to listen to rock album by Pink Floyd you need Animals!The guitar work is just perfect!Animals is another important moment for Pink Floyd.This is the first album where all band members don't contribute to the album enough!Roger Waters is the sole leader and he overshadow the others,especially Rick Wright.But I think this is not fatal for the quality of music,contrariwise!The genius of Roger Waters is developed completely and he show it here and on The Wall,which are albums with very similar musical ideas.On Animals the sounds of pigs,sheep and dogs are reproduced in magnificent way!Another album from the golden Pink Floyd collection!

While the previous album began and ended with two extended tracks, filling the middle with shorter ones, this album has two extremely short tracks on the ends, with the epic pieces sandwiched in between. The lyrics depict the flaws of capitalism as the band saw them (perhaps ironic at the time, biting the hand that fed them, but Pink Floyd apparently had no qualms about doing that). The album concept is similar to George Orwell's animal farm. While the lyrics are well-written, they are not nearly as effective without the backing of the excellently crafted music one finds here. Each song has its own identity. This is one of Pink Floyd's most outstanding efforts.

"Pigs on the Wing (Part One)" Waters sings a delicate song with an acoustic guitar that serves as an introduction.

"Dogs" Twelve-string guitar and amazing singing dominate this song. Gilmour does a fantastic job through, showing himself to be an amazing guitarist and a capable singer. This song moves through several phases, describing the backstabbing businessman. I love the many aspects of this epic song; it is one of my favorite Pink Floyd songs. The subtle synthesizer work is wonderful, as is the vocal repetition that carries on until it is faded out.and then faded back in. Waters finishes up the song with some misanthropic vocal work. Gilmour's guitar work (electric and otherwise) stand out throughout. The track is one of the longest Pink Floyd songs, but unlike some of their other lengthy efforts (such as "Echoes" or "Shine On You Crazy Diamond"), the psychedelic passages fail to become stale.

"Pigs (Three Different Ones)" Beginning with snorting, this song has Waters play some high end bass notes over a keyboard riff, and Gilmour throws in some crunchy guitar. Waters's vocals are at their best on this one. Gilmour employs a talkbox during his solo in the middle; some of his licks remind me of "Rotten Apple" by Alice in Chains, but he doesn't overdo it. The percussion isn't very creative, but, almost humorously (because this album references animals), there's some major cowbell action.

"Sheep" Over the braying of the titular animal, Wright plays a panning electric piano, and Mason soon enters. Waters's voice becomes a synthesizer after he sings each line in the main verses. Waters would use this effect later on "The Gunner's Dream," only then, morphing his voice into a saxophone. In an odd way, the singing sounds a lot like that of Adrian Belew. The repeated vocal from "Dogs" returns here, albeit briefly, having a profound lyrical effect, since the sheep are warned, "You better watch out- there may be dogs about." There is a twisted, mechanical-sounding version of the twenty-third psalm recited in the middle.

"Pigs on the Wing (Part Two)" Waters sings the second part of the first song, vaguely summing up his concept. Apparently, this was written for his wife, and given the context of "Bring the Boys Back Home" from a later album, this theme makes perfect sense. He apparently identifies himself as a dog, and wants shelter from the pigs. But companionship can overcome all, he implies.

Review why?, Animals, Pink Floyd, 1977 (IIRC)

StarStarStar

For some, Animals is the Pink Floyd album. This is entirely understandable. The lyrics are top notch and absolutely venomous. It has a higher RAWK! percentage than its predecessors. It's fairly heavily polished, and the pieces are long and just about as complex as anything Floyd ever did. Furthermore, Waters and Gilmour are both working (relatively :p) overtime as instrumentalists on the first couple of pieces. It's not at all their best album for me, certainly, but I like it. Unfortunately, Dogs is a bit messier than I like, and both it and Sheep have noticeable weak sections. Anyway, introduction: Good album (especially Pigs), but not on the level with the great Floyd albums. Knocks the stuffing out of 90% of The Wall.

The two Pigs On The Wing sections basically act as bookends for the album's three long pieces. They're nice little understated acoustic pieces, with a good set of lyrics, and, as a pair, they work (even with a typically nasal Waters vocal).

Dogs, the album's big piece, opens with a little insistent Gilmour acoustic hook and Wright's rather eerie keys. Even Mason provides some rather drumming touches every now and then while he and Waters keep the background of the piece together. Wright and Gilmour wander between incredibly emotive and well connected solos and backgrounds and rather isolated little lines that don't really go anywhere or fit into anywhere. The howling dogs sound effect is used particularly well, though the 'stone' repeat is a cause for serious annoyance. The main melodies are strong and frequently recalled in new ways. The song's most striking instrumental moment is probably the guitar solo-with electric piano underneath about six minutes in and subsequent brief vocal bit, though all sorts of chipping guitar parts provide brief fascination throughout. Wright's extended atmospheric keyboard solo is more than a little uncomfortable, and while it holds bursts of neatness, and the awkwardness is perhaps an intentional element, the overall sensation is simply one of mild discomfort rather than real directed fear or panic or pain. Another Gilmour solo is slipped in between the last real 'verse' and the final section of lyrics, and though it doesn't really seem to link into the preceding bit, it is exceptional. The concluding section of the song, with all the instruments combined into one acidic, desperate Floyd entity, comes together fantastically, with Waters' gripping lyrics, vocal overdubs and classy guitar. Strong from the lyrics and vocals side, but I find it's let down by the band's occasional non sequiturs and rather loose grip of mood.

Pigs is a bit more solid, and while Gilmour is just as prominent as a guitarist, it's far more tailored to the piece. His little jibs and almost ironic chugs perfectly fit into the whole reprimanding, aggressive vibe of the song. Wright, though a little less omnipresent, is also much sharper on this one, adding in suitably silly pig effects and a whole range of little synth and piano ideas as well as a simple, but effective, organ theme. Though it's a strong song throughout, the instrumental sections are the definite ups, with Gilmour's fantastic WEBBEH! talk box moments and a lot of subtlety and depth, with a tendency to slip in guitar, synth and bass flourishes quietly enough to skip the attention one time, but importantly enough to catch hold of it another. The conclusion is pure brilliance, with a wandering Waters bassline, multiple simultaneous kicking Gilmour solos and Mason holding the fort by reiterating the percussion from the vocal bits. Another great one in terms of the lyrics.

Sheep is also good, even if Waters' bass is very much One Of These Days lite and the silly bleating effect introduction wanders on without really doing a lot (much as Wright's solo is perfectly nice, I'd appreciate the effort to give me a bit of contrast without such an annoying bass groove). Gilmour is again on top form, with surprisingly edgy and discordant guitar parts, and the way the vocal fades into a choppy organ or synth part is extremely cool. Wright seems re-energised, with generally thicker and more dynamic organ and synth tones, drawing on those of Wish You Were Here and Dark Side Of The Moon. The mid-section of the song perhaps drags a bit, with that hideous bass groove over an initially amusing (but soon ends up feeling a bit gimmicky) parody of psalm 23, but the full-on spacey-madness-among-these-dark-Satanic-mills burst immediately following it is apologetically entertaining. Now, this'd be a perfectly good piece if the bass sound wasn't simply insufferable, and even as it is it has a lot of merits, but I don't really enjoy listening to it just because of that ubiquitous Waters groove. Another bookend Pigs On The Wing section rounds off the album rather neatly.

Anyway, short review, that, but the point is made. Animals is a cool, fun rock album, with one exemplary track (Pigs), two OK ones (Dogs and Sheep) with a couple of particularly weak sections between them and two bookends. Unfortunately, it doesn't really stray beyond that. There's no doubt that Gilmour is a real standout here, and anyone who likes his solos needs to have this one, even if he's not quite as subtle as on some of the earlier albums. Equally, Waters' lyrics are brilliant throughout, with a clear idea of where they're going, wordplay, wit and a healthy dose of truth (and the delivery is to match, though I've basically ignored the vocals in the review). Three stars might seem a bit harsh, but I put this album on for the moments of brilliance, not for the merely OK whole.

Rating: Three Stars, but a high three stars. If you're a Floyd fan, it probably won't disappoint.

Favourite Track: Pigs (Three Different Ones)

A quick note: according to the might of Wikipedia, Gilmour's handling bass in Pigs and Sheep, and Waters is taking a few rhythm guitar parts. Musician references may well be wrong.

This is Pink Floyd's most arguably progressive and notable achievement, a true mark of any genius for which the band is oft praised. THIS is the only album I believe to be a masterpiece by this influential quartet.

1. Pigs on the Wing (Part 1)- Intro acoustic number with great lyrics and vocals by Waters; this really fits into the context of the album perfectly, but isn't much of a song on its own without its counterpart or the 3 main songs. 8/10

2. Dogs- Want to hear what Pink Floyd is all about? Look no further! Great vocals, great guitar, great atmosphere, this is such an inventive, sophisticated performance! Gilmour shines, the instrumentation and atmosphere are always interesting, and this illuminates a side to Pink Floyd that leaves music on the previous albums (and subsequent, unfortunately) a bit lacking. Whereas Dark Side had a brilliant concept but the music wasn't up to par, Animals fixes every problem that Dark Side had: the instrumentation is more intriguing, progressive, and the song is much more tight compositionally without being too empty. Fantastic. 10/10

3. Pigs (Three Different Ones)- My favorite Pink Floyd song of all time, easily. I absolutely love this song; every moment is magic. The pig sounds complement it as a cherry on top of an elaborate cake. Waters's lyrics are at his shining moment here, and the instrumentation is hypnotic. I love Wright's keyboard work especially. HA HA, charade you are! Flawless. 10+/10

4. Sheep- From the jazz-tinged keyboard intro, this is another solid song, but for me doesn't quite reach the perfection of the previous two tracks. Occasionally this track may drag a bit if I'm not in the mood for it, particularly the repetitive ending, but for the most part it continues the wonderful trend of what came before it: more effective use of instrumentation, tighter compositions, and more experimental and progressive tendencies. 9/10

5. Pigs on the Wing (Part 2)- This mirrors the first track. A perfect closer to this album... I wouldn't have it any other way. 8/10

If you want to hear Pink Floyd, pick up this album first. This is their short-lived pinnacle, as their other albums aren't quite the genius that they are cracked up to be, despite being decent rock albums. A perfect psychedelic mix of Pink Floyd's concepts and music.

Now THIS is what I call a masterpiece.

Ever since I started listening to Pink Floyd, which was way before I knew progressive rock existed, this has always been my favorite album by the band. Yes, we have a concept album about how society has become a bunch of "sheep" to be used and abused by "the man". Understandable, since Pink Floyd was by this point starting to have to deal with worldwide fame and used their music to express the way that they felt like pawns in a big game of chess run by their record company. Or perhaps they were focusing on the social and political issues of the time. Either one is just as likely as the other.

As for the music itself, the track order from Wish You Were Here has been reversed, with the album opening and closing with a short track and the long tracks sandwiched in the middle. Dogs is probably my favorite Floyd song of all time. The guitar solo in there feels like it wants to reach deep into your soul and rip out your deepest, darkest secrets for the entire world to see. It's almost hauntingly beautiful to me, although the entire album is really. Pigs boasts some of the best vocal work that Waters ever did, and Sheep has beautiful keyboard work as well as... well, you get where I'm going with this. This is true psychedelic and atmospheric beauty.

As a last note, I also think this album fixes some of the problems that Dark Side had. This concept is much more focused and the instrumentation is much more progressive than I've ever found it on Dark Side. If you want to see what Pink Floyd is all about, start here. You won't regret it. 5 snorting and grunting barnyard animals out of 5.

'Animals> - Pink Floyd (9/10)

This could be said to be my favourite Pink Floyd album. The Orwellian concept behind it is very interesting, and a great starting-off point to write a masterpiece. The guitars in 'Animals' really shine through, more so then on any other Pink Floyd record. The album consists of three epics, and an acoustic piece split into two parts. The structure of the album really adds to it's togetherness. After a pleasant acoustic section, the longest epic 'Dogs' sets in, which is generally a depressing piece, but very well done. Theres some very nice soloing from David Gilmour in this piece, and the lyrics (which tell of the plight of the dog, who is always trying to go through life aggressively and claw his way to the top) are some of the most poignant Pink Floyd's ever done.

The album's concept revolves around three animals (Dogs, Pigs and Sheep) which are used as character stocks used to describe different types of people in the world. There are the Dogs, aggressive and paranoid. There are also the Pigs, who are manipulative and intelligent, and finally the Sheep, who are the 'followers' and docile ones. While it borrows alot from Orwell's 'Animal Farm,' the concept is expanded to a great musical depth, and sparks an originality of it's own.

Next, after 'Dogs' is 'Pigs (Three Different Ones)' which is actually the only song on the album which was written specificially for the album. The other tracks were made out of existing material that hadn't been used yet. Of the three epics, 'Pigs' stands as being my least enjoyed. I'm not quite sure, but I think it might be the vocal delivery by Roger Waters, which I'm not really a fan of.

Next is 'Sheep,' which is my favourite piece on the album. The production of the song is very cool (having the sustained vocal notes changing into electronic noise etc) despite a rather weak middle part, the end more than makes up for it in it's sheer intensity. There is a great Stratocaster(?) sound in the end, as the album reaches it's pinnacle climax.

As the album ends, the listener is treated to a recap of the acoustic 'Pigs On The Wing' which is more or less identical to the first part. This is a really fantastic album, and my most listened-to release of Pink Floyd. Total brilliance!

After the huge succes of DSOTM and WYWH, Animals was commercialy not very good, compared to the precesors the sales were not very high. To make things worse, the album made after this one, The Wall, also was a big hit and sold millions of copies. I'm very happy music isn't about commercial succes, cause Animals is one of the bands most stunning, most powerful albums, it also is the last album before Roger would take control. In fact, Roger had more control than ever before on this album already, but I don't dislike that, Roger is a great musician and all the three albums of Pink Floyd under his lead (This one, The Wall and The Final Cut) were great.

I'll start of with the opener and ender of the album, "Pigs On The Wing (pt.1 & pt.2)". Roger did the lead vocals on these songs and played acoustic guitar on both, they are pretty much the bookends of this album.

The first epic is "Dogs", it's about the corrupt, money obsessed bussinesmen, who are being controled by the Pigs, their big leaders. The song has mellow vocals and a smooth acoustic guitar playing. The song has some softer parts and a lengthy (maybe a little bit too lengthy) synth solo. The Outro of the song is very powerful and confronts the dogs with their personalities. The true highlights of this song are the amazing guitar solo's, lot's of them. The first solo is fast, powerful, and gives me shivers every time I hear it. The second solo is played with two guitars in harmony, it's also great. The third solo is slower, but beautiful, it is the perfect example of a musician putting all of his emotions in his instrument, great job David! The fouth solo is once again a fast solo and the sixth is the same as the second solo. Dogs is an amazing song, beautiful lyrics wich are powerfully sung and great guitar playing, one of the best songs ever made.

After the amazing "Dogs" we get to "Pigs (Three Different Ones)". It's about the powerful leaders who only desire more power than they already have. The lengthy verses are very powerful, and have great lyrics. Mary Whitehouse, who claimed that Pink Floyd influenced young people to take drugs and destroyed their minds, is the one who is paid back in the third verse. The song features a great talkbox solo by David and a lovely outro solo, wich is often extended during live performances of the song.

The next song is "Sheep", it's about the people who always do what they are told because they are afraid of the pigs and the dogs. At the same time sheep is a parody about religion, for an example, during the instrumental section on the background are the lyrics of a psalm heard, whith slightly changed lyrics. The ending of the song is a powerful chord pattern. Sheep is, though being very powerful, much more accesible as "Dogs" and "Pigs (Three Different Ones)", nevertheless, it's a great song.

Animals is Pink Floyds most powerful, maybe even agressive album. Also, it shows slight signs of the dark, haunted mood of The Wall and The Final Cut. The album is essential for any prog collection, and definitely for a Pink Floyd fan!

Can't figure this one out. Every song begins nicely enough, and as a prog fan, the lengths of the three focus tracks shouldn't be that much of a problem. Unfortunately, all of ''Dogs'', ''Pigs'' and ''Sheep'' could have been trimmed by 1/3 of their length and I'd be more interested. Many of the jams are of little interest to me and either go nowhere or are too boring. The instrumental breaks are too sedated and slumpy with the rhythm section not really doing much.

''Sheep'' is the best song here as there is some form of dynamic building and dropping here. Both this track and ''Pigs'' show an aggressive side to Pink Floyd never before heard, possibly to counter the punk trend starting at that time. ''Dogs'' has a few interesting guitar chords and synth lines, and Gilmour delivers a fine vocal performance. However, ANIMALS brings out the weakness of Roger Waters's angry, higher registered vocals; they become so grating over time.

It seems that ANIMALS is the beginning of Waters assuming control of Pink Floyd; most of the writing credits are his as well as most of the singing. The long jamming is really the major problem here; I've always had problems with long Pink Floyd songs as many of them have five to ten minutes of fluff. The two ''Pigs on the Wing'' parts aren't necessary either, just two simple acoustic jams. Start your Pink Floyd search with DARK SIDE OF THE MOON, and come here after a couple of albums.

Pink Floyd back on track after the tame hit album that was Wish You Were Here. They're back on track because this time it sounds as if they're fully behind what they are doing again.

That is to say at least one member of the band must have been behind it, since this is clearly Roger Waters' game. It's his song writing, his vision, his drive. But the great thing is that Waters' thematic focus is backed-up by the very strong guitar and keyboard work. The two major forces in Pink Floyd's appeal that would disappear almost completely on the next two albums.

Animals is one of those few coherent Pink Floyd albums that flows naturally from start to end without weaker cuts, pointless experimentalism or sloppy filler songs. The first half of Pigs is a bit repetitive maybe but nevertheless it's my personal favourite together with Meddle and Live Gumma. 4.5 stars

"Animals" is the 10th full-length studio album by UK progressive rock act Pink Floyd. The album was released through Harvest/EMI in January 1977. Most of the music on the album was written by bassist/vocalist Roger Waters, who at this point in Pink Floyd´s career, would more or less take over the creative process in the band. Guitarist/vocalist David Gilmour is credited as co-writer on the track "Dogs" though. Keyboard player Richard Wright has on more than one occassion commented that "Animals" was the album were Roger Waters ego centered ways really came out and the seed for the inevitable split of Pink Floyd was sown here.

"Animals" is indeed the brainchild of Roger Waters. The man wrote all the lyrics, wrote most of the music and sings most of the vocals too, leaving only a couple of vocal lines on "Dogs" for David Gilmour. As a consequence "Animals" comes off as a very different album compared to it´s two commercially successful predecessors "Dark Side of the Moon (1973)" and "Wish You Were Here (1975)". Personally I think "Animals" is the most progressive sounding rock album Pink Floyd ever made (if you don´t count the early psychadelic experimentation as progressive rock).

The album features 5 tracks. The two short tracks "Pigs on the Wing Part 1" and "2" bookend the album while there are three longer main tracks inbetween those two. The 17:04 minute long "Dogs" which occupied almost the entire Side 1 of the original LP release is an excellent track where David Gilmour´s and Roger Waters collaboration works wonders. I won´t hesitate when I call this track a progressive masterpiece. Even the ambient synth laden section in the middle of the track is greatly enjoyable to my ears and such parts can sometimes drag on for too long and become tedious. The 11:28 minute long "Pigs (three different ones)" and the 10:16 minute long "Sheep" which are dominated by Roger Waters presence and desperate sounding vocals are both very well written tracks too. Intriguing songwriting and great playing/singing.

To my ears the sound production is not quite as accomplished as on the two predecessors but it´s still professional and very well sounding, suiting the music perfectly. Upon conclusion "Animals" is another excellent album by Pink Floyd. I think it´s very admirable that the group opted for a more progressive and less commercial style on this album when they achieved so much success mixing their progressive rock with commercial pop/rock on the two predecessors. It shows that Pink Floyd were an act that went their own ways and always did what they felt was right. A 4 - 4.5 star (85%) rating is well deserved.

Going Two Directions at Once

Pink Floyd's ANIMALS is the last of the major Floyd albums I digested. It is said to mark the beginning of the end for the band, and coincides with Roger Waters taking the reins. It marks a band in transition, a band both losing its identity but following a new muse. The result is perhaps the most coherent concept album the band would make, filled with Waters' nasty lyrics at their most razor sharp and David Gilmour's guitars at their most bold. But it also shows a tiredness I had never detected in a Floyd album before. Some of the retreads of old sounds aren't even thinly hidden, sections are extended to lengths the band must have known were overlong for record, and at least one song ("Sheep") has little identity on its own but is simply a prototype of the 70's Floyd sound.

There are some dazzling moments on this album. The opening build of "Dogs" and its great lines "Got to be able to pick out the easy meat" sung in odd rhythm is Floyd at its zenith. The song contains several of Gilmour's most signature leads, including a diminished harmony fall that is melodically out of character but perfect for the song. Still, the soloing gets a bit long, and the epic nature of the tune derives more from its endurance than from its sheer size a la Genesis, Yes, or even Opeth. The song had actually already been written for WYWH, as was "Sheep," and when the sounds of "Pigs (Three Different Ones)" come in eerily similar to "Have a Cigar" we find a band that is running on the fumes of its tank.

There are a few allusions from the glimmery new ideas that will appear on the subsequent THE WALL, itself another horrific vision of Waters sarcastic mind. While Floyd always had a sharp wit, there was also the sheer wonder of the psychedelic world it was creating. ANIMALS lacks this positive emotional aspect, and though the Animal Farm derived story line works quite well as a concept, the feel is overwhelmingly gloomy. Even the production is harsh, with each instrument sitting in such obvious isolation that you can envision the musicians doing their final takes on separate days while the others were out following their own whims.

In the time of the punk uprising, however, such nastiness must have made some sense. With other bands slowly catering to pop demands, Floyd made a harsh political commentary led by repetitions of "Oh, Charade you are." The songs are long, the solos indulgent, and unlike their contemporaries, the band is angry at the change of seasons. The authenticity of that negative energy makes this a powerful album. As a whole, it succeeds in its mission, probably more than its double disc follower. Certainly not a masterpiece, Animals, for this writer, does meet the standards for "excellent," as a piece of conceptual rock work ideal for the time it was written.

We are indeed, a bunch of animals. Pigs, sheep or dogs? Well, that's up to our behaviors to establish.

Pink Floyd really surprised me with this particular album. Their music has never appeal to me, even though their concepts are quite OK, the end product never lifted me to a better state of mind. But with Animals, they really made it, because is good, fresh, original, simple and quite wonderful. The music is simple, with the acoustic guitar setting the pace for the rest of the instruments, which perform freely and with sense. The keyboards in particular gave an atmospheric approach and the result is a brilliant album full with well thought songwriting and showing that the musicians can work for the songs and not at opposite way.

This is a relaxed and fresh journey that will take you into a subtle protest against our behaviors, and how mankind has become into pigs, dogs and sheep. In the best form of classic prog rock, there are epic songs like DOGS and PIGS (THREE DIFFERENT ONES), that flows great and are those kind of songs that don't need too much to really appreciate because are great composed and everything seems to work fine in the final result. There's always a "bluessy" edge to the music and everything seems to be on their accurate amount, as noises and layering. I don't know too much about the insides of PF but after hearing DSOTM and The Wall, this album is quite impressive and way more interesting indeed.

If you don't like Pink Floyd (like me and few others) this is an album you should check. This is a good surprise and indeed a wonderful album. I never thought I would give a 5 stars to a PF album but I have to accept it, this is really a wonderful experience.

This was by far the hardest Pink Floyd album for me to review. I gave 'Dark Side' 5 stars, and 'Wish You Were Here' 4 stars. Here, I was faced with a problem: I prefer 'Animals' to 'WYWH' by a long shot, but I can't really rate it equally to 'Dark Side'. 4.5 stars is the obvious solution but not an option on this website. I rounded down to 4 simply because the album has many more 5's than 4's already. But the extent of my reviewing justifies an album that I still believe deserves nothing more (or less) than 4.5 stars.

With 'Animals', the Floyd changed their tactics a little bit (not a lot though), deciding to do away with all their usual guest musicians (EVEN THE SAXOPHONIST!!!) and create a strictly four-man sound. This format lends itself nicely to the content and concept of 'Animals', resulting in a much darker and rawer sound. Gilmour's 'Dogs' is brilliantly nasty, with some top-notch soloing and appropiate instrumentation (not over-produced like 'Shine on...'). And lyrically it is faultless. 'Pigs' has a quirky yet equally dark nature to it, not entirely worthy of it's 11-minute length but effective nonetheless. And lyrically it is faultless. 'Sheep', my personal favourite, is fantastically hard- edged, very cruel yet fun, and showcases more of Wright's playing, which is always a good thing. And lyrically it is, you guessed it, faultless. The other little song(s) is irrelevant (existant only to increase the number of tracks on the album) but harmless anyway.

Overall, 'Animals' has some of the band's best lyrical content, and definately their best instrumental skill. But it does also have, to a lesser degree, the same problem I outlined with 'WYWH', which is that there is simply less to explore and appreciate then 'Dark Side'. On this album, the issue is nowhere near as large as on 'Wish You Were Here', and the production is suitably less tight. But it still just doesn't quite sit up there with the soundtrack to the Wizard of Oz. Shining moments outweigh those on 'WYWH' (excuse the pun), hence the 4.5 I wanted to give it, and I very almost chose the 5 star after refreshing my memory of the vocoder'ed Psalm 23 reference. But it's had enough praise. 4 stars shouldn't dent it too much.

Pigs Might Fly, Impossible and Preposterous, but Pink Floyd Makes It A Reality

"Animal Farm" by George Orwell states, "all animals are equal, but some are more equal than others. Pink Floyd were inspired by the thematic content of the novel, an anthropomorphic socio political saga of looking at the world differently; perhaps politically it only applies to the politics of the day, however this biting satire could apply to the politics of today. In Water's conceptualisation in this world you are either a pig, a sheep or a dog. Dogs are the corporate predators that have a no compromise attitude, are devilishly cunning and run in packs with survival at the top of their highest priority. 'Dogs' is the best track on this album taking up almost the entire side one of the vinyl at about 17 minutes, it has some of the most searing guitar that David Gilmour has played in his career. The lead solos are highly emotive ranging from soft, gentle and mellow to frenetic and aggressive. The lyrics are poetic and absolutely encapsulating, "I gotta admit that I'm a little bit confused. Sometimes it seems to me as if I'm just being used. Gotta stay awake, gotta try and shake off this creeping malaise. If I don't stand my own ground, how can I find my way out of this maze?". It is a mesmirising song, with melancholy vocals and exciting synthesiser from Wright, some of his best material is captured on this album, which could be viewed as almost a paean to his genius; RIP Richard.

The album is bookended by 'Pigs On The Wing' which has a memorable Waters vocal and soft acoustics. The pigs on this concept album are of course the tyrannical moralists who are motivated by power, that corrupts absolutely as usual, and they have the ability to go to the top of the hierarchical ladder despite who they tread on to get there, but it's lonely at the top. They are focussed to impose their estranged worldview on the other animals. The story is one of corruption with all its negativity, and deception, that will ultimately drag the antagonist to their doom. The tracks are best heard as part of the whole rather than as separate entities, they work well as bookends, and I count them as part of the lengthy tracks that require these short pieces to make sense.

Moving on to other pigs, there are three different ones that are visualised in the surreal 11:30 track that has some very nice melodies, and mordant lyrics; "Hey you, Whitehouse, Ha ha, charade you are. You house proud town mouse, Ha ha, charade you are, You're trying to keep our feelings off the street. You're nearly a real treat, All tight lips and cold feet, And do you feel abused?" Of course this was Waters attack on Mary Whitehouse, self confessed moralist of the British public who had committed some onslaught on Pink Floyd for their stage antics and lyrical nature. Waters' literally spat at a fan on the DSOTM tour which made headlines and of course led to the inspiration of "The Wall" stage show where a giant wall between the band and the audience was erected. Interestingly enough, much of the music on "Animals" was already written and performed on the DSOTM tour; 'Dogs' was known as 'You Gotta Be Crazy' and 'Sheep' was actually titled 'Raving and Drooling'. I am kind of glad they changed those titles.

So who are the three different pigs on Pigs (three different ones)? It is no secret among Floydians that pig 1 was the business pig, the lying, cheating, thieving fat suit that deceives their way to the top of the business rung; pig 2 is the politician, Thatcher at the time, who had already, along with Whitehouse, copped a heap from UK TV on "The Goodies"; and pig 3 was Mary Whitehouse, as has been mentioned, who was scared witless that the British public were being perverted.

The concept was further enhanced with the iconography of the album, the enigmatic pig flying above the smoke stacks of Battersea Power Station became an image of the band never to be forgotten. Pink Floyd literally got a pig to fly when the ropes gave way and the pig sailed in to the heavens; perhaps a fitting tribute to the band bucking against the pigs of the music industry that were jumping on the punk band wagon.

The fatalistic concept always works for Pink Floyd as it echoes the bleak psychedelic music, but there is a real sense on "Animals" of a ray of hope, the way Gilmour plays with those uplifting chords and melodic notes, Wright's soaring keyboard swoops, Waters' pulsating bass, and Mason's exceptional percussion embellishments; you could not get better than the virtuoso genius of this lineup. However, I always felt that "Animals" was one of the darkest Pink Floyd adventures primarily due to 'Sheep'. There is a section in this track that disturbs me everytime and it is the part where a very doomy synth is heard and a voice over narration. It is almost subliminal but if you listen closely you can hear a parody of The Lord's Prayer with a nasty twist; "With bright knives He releaseth my soul. He maketh me to hang on hooks in high places. He converteth me to lamb cutlets, For lo, He hath great power, and great hunger..." The sheep are the passive followers, docile and innocent, the common man, headed for the slaughterhouse to be chopped into little pieces (reminiscent of 'One of These Days'), exploited by the dogs and pigs. The exploitation continues until the sheep rebel and rise up against the oppressors only to be exploited again, a vicious cycle. In a sense Pink Floyd themselves. The sheep in the novel gain a consciousness when they see the corruption of the rich corporations, and they rebel, as Pink Floyd rebelled against the trash music of the late 70s by producing music like this. Of course the irony is the communists could never do such a thing or they would be slaughtered too, and Pink Floyd are well aware of these ironies, even making fun of themselves, after the incredible success of "DSOTM" and "WYWH". They had to face these corporations who wanted a piece of them too. The band had already touched on this theme on "WYWH" especially, 'Have A Cigar' The 'communist' record companies wanted the band to conform to the music of the day; they refused and the result was "Animals".

To conclude every part of this album is equally important to the rest. The music is lengthy, complex and houses a framework of some of Waters most scathing attacks on the music business and politics. When I first heard this on vinyl as a teen I just did not get it. I was confused by the high concept, the visuals puzzled me, and it is nothing like "DSOTM" at all, or "WYWH", except it was sandwiched in between "WYWH' and 'The Wall" as a transition to both, and I think a lot of us were expecting something akin to the previous masterpieces, which it is not. However, I listen to this today and it jolts me every time. The concept is Orwellian, the music is psych and symphonic prog, the vocals are exquisite, and this album paved the way for the grand concept masterpiece of "The Wall".

I've always had a strange relationship with this album: first I think it's underrated, and then I wonder why I ever liked it so much in the first place. I suppose that's not a great sign for a masterpiece.

There's a clear lack of creative collaboration from the group on this album. I think that most Floyd followers can feel it. For example, Nick's drumming on Sheep is almost tragically simple. Fortunately, the band were still in a place that there was room for Rick and Dave to add much-needed musical complexity and melody to work that would increasingly be credited to Roger. Waters may have written the songs, but many of the musical ideas were not his, and that's why I think this album works as well as it does.

Interesting theme, good lyrics, famous album art, and lots of good playing make this essential listening (though, of course, we all know this already, given the Floyd's uniquely large share of the crossover prog market!). Not as good as what came before it, but inspired enough to make me just a bit sorry for what came after.

Animals happens to be my least favorite out of the four classic era Pink Floyd albums that began with Dark Side Of The Moon and ended with The Wall. Of course this doesn't really say much considering that it's still a strong album from the band and the four star rating feels like a natural grade for this record. Still, this can be seen both as a privilege but also as a hinder for it ever becoming anything more than that.

This album was the first in line of releases where Roger Waters became the bands self-proclaimed leader by creating the record's concept, writing the lyrics and receiving credits for most of the songwriting. Even though I like when Waters gets control of the concept outline and lyrics, the songwriting is a whole different story. The three 10+ minutes compositions featured here are way too long for their own good. Dogs is obviously the biggest sinner with Pigs not falling too much behind in that aspect while Sheep has one of those unnecessarily prolonged intros that never seems to work for me, especially when it's added right in the middle of an album.

The experimentation with the sound effects have always been an important part of Pink Floyd's repertoire, but this time these effects are mainly used on vocals which gets old the moment they start using it on Dogs. Unfortunately one seems to really need to accept this new gimmick in order to fully enjoy this album and I'm obviously not the person this material was written for. As for the conceptual aspect of Animals, it does come off sounding way to cynical and never succeeds to engage me on the same level as The Wall or The Final Cut manage to do.

I realize that my review has been on the negative side but that's because I'm trying to balance out all the praise that Animals has received over the years. It's definitely a great album in its own right but problems do arise whenever I try to compare it to the other classics from Pink Floyd's career.

***** star songs: Pigs On The Wing, Pt. 1 (1:25)

**** star songs: Dogs (17:04) Pigs (Three Different Ones) (11:28) Sheep (10:16) Pigs On The Wing, Pt. 2 (1:25)

A truly haunting record, almost perfectly reflecting Orwell's Animal Farm, and a true masterpiece.

A thread brought to mind this album, "Albums that you bought based on cover art." Dark Side of the Moon was my first Pink Floyd album and it quickly become my favorite album and then I needed more Floyd. Instead of focusing on ratings and reviews I looked at the cover art an thought, EUREKA. Silly I know, but it really is great artwork.

Anyways the album starts of with a lovely little folk song, Pigs On the Wing. Water's pulls off the vocals almost perfectly (a rare occasion for him actually, but I still love all his vocals) and this little melancholy love song is the perfect start to the album.

Dogs begins with an acoustic guitar riff (many Porcupine Tree fans would say, "Hey! They stole that from Time Flies!') which gradually becomes heavier and Gilmour sings the vocals. After two verses, a lovely guitar solo which is flowing with emotion. After quite a bit of instrumental work (with dogs barking in the background) and some more verses by Gilmour, Waters takes over the vocals, a reprise of the earlier guitar solo and the an absolutely epic and heavy ending. "Who was found dead on the phone?"

Pigs starts off the second half of the album and is a very catchy tune. After some almost hypnotizing verses there is a lovely little talkbox solo done by Gilmour that resembles a pig squealing. After the hypnotic melody begins again Waters voice becomes more spiteful and eventually Gilmour bursts into another powerful guitar solo.

Sheep starts off with Rick Wright's highlight of the album, a keyboard intro that is beautifully played, and then bursts into a heavy and upbeat rock song. Waters spits out the lyrics as Gilmour's powerful riff keeps playing. After awhile there is a instrumental interlude with a guitar solo and a mechanical voice reciting the Lord's prayer. This creates a very uneasy effect with Gilmour and Wright's haunting playing in the background. After one last verse by Waters another powerful guitar solo fades out to chirping birds.

To end the album, a all-too-necessary reprise of Pigs On the Wing. A very sad ending to an album but it leaves the listener satisfied.

The overall feeling this album gives me is pure amazement at how the band pulled off such a masterpiece after two previous masterpieces. It may even be better than Wish You Were Here. The last "group" Pink Floyd record. 5 beautiful gold stars.

This was the last, and in my opinion, best of the truly great Pink Floyd albums (sorry, but The Wall has too many flaws, and despite amazing production, it doesn't sound like a band effort). This was the last time you would hear all four members working together to create the complete Pink Floyd sound.

The concept, as you know quite well by now, is loosely based on George Orwell's "Animal Farm", but delves deeply into political issues of oppression, complacency and uprising. It was refreshing to hear Roger Waters finally get away from writing about Syd Barrett's madness.

As I stated previously, despite Waters' lead role as composer, and his fantastic production work, the rest of tha band shines on this album as well. Gilmour plays flawless solos and haunting rhythms, Wright's keyboards flow eerily around throughout the album, and Nick Mason gets to actually play the drums (unlike the mostly simple timekeeping on the next album).

Each of the three major tracks is a masterpiece. But you should know this, too.

An anomaly in the Floyd discography. It's the progiest thing the band did since at least Meddle. It's the first album where Richard Wright does not contribute any music. Judging by the writing credits, you would almost think it was a Waters solo album. Two of the songs here were already written and performed live before WYWH was recorded. There's lots of synths here(VCS3, MiniMoog, ARP Solina, Mini-Korg). Only AMLOR ten years later had more synths. But honestly, does anybody really care about that album? I didn't think so.

Waters had a concept about humans being portrayed as different animals as early as the DSOTM tour. As early as 1974 the band performed two songs that would later be recorded for this album. Of course the lyrics and song titles were changed to fit the animals theme. "You Gotta Be Crazy" became "Dogs", while "Raving & Drooling" became "Sheep". The writing credits here are very misleading. Gilmour wrote almost all of the music for "Dogs", while Waters wrote the lyrics obviously. Gilmour also deserves a co-writing credit on "Sheep"(the same way he deserved a co-writing credit on "Money"). Unlike earlier albums, Waters does most of the lead vocals on Animals. It would stay that way until he left.

Waters only plays acoustic guitar on the "Pigs On A Wing" songs and bass on "Dogs". Gilmour plays bass on "Pigs(Three Different Ones)" and "Sheep". Have you ever wondered why the bass playing on those two songs sound better than just about any other Floyd song? Well, now you know why. Although Wright had no input to the music, his playing here is great. Besides the synths he plays Hammond, Fender Rhodes, Wurlitzer and Hohner clavinet. This is the only Floyd album to feature both talk-box *and* vocoder. They even use the secret ingredient which can make any song better: cowbell!

Animals has some of Gilmour's best guitar playing on a Floyd album. He overdubbed so many guitar parts on this album that when they toured for it they had to hire a second guitarist. That guitarist was Snowy White. On the 8track cartridge version of Animals, the two "Pigs On A Wing" songs are joined together by a solo from Snowy. I still haven't heard this but I assume it wouldn't be too hard to find on torrent sites. Mason does some of his best drumming here since at least DSOTM.

This album didn't quite do as well sales wise as the previous two. That's understandable because there was no song suitable for radio. Animals is also more adventurous musically than those two albums. For people who loved this album when it came out, it must have been a shock to hear The Wall for the first time. This once great band's last good album. After this they became 'Roger Waters featuring Pink Floyd' and then later, 'The David Gilmour Band'. Still, for an album released in January 1977, it's pretty proggy. Pink Floyd could only make a more mainstream and radio-friendly album after this.

If it weren't for the pointless "Pigs On A Wing" songs, I would be tempted to give this 5 stars. The only other problem I have is that the Solina solo in the middle of "Dogs" goes on a bit too long. Otherwise a solid 4 stars.

Animals is one of my favorite albums from the 70s and one of the great albums of all-time BUT, like Selling England by the Pound, I do not consider this a masterpiece. It is flawed. Even as a teen I could not stand to listen to any of the "Pigs" songs. "Dogs" and "Sheep" --two of the greatest prog songs ever done--I can (and do) listen to all the time but I have no patience or tolerance for the others. I understand and appreciate the genius of the lyrical theme (based on George Orwell's Animal Farm) but the music--the guitar, simple chord play and unappealing melodies (what melodies?) and vocal style and effects just grate against my musical sensibilities (or insensitivities, as the case may be). A great album, highly recommended to all prog curious.

The concept borrowed by Orwell's Animals Farm is just a starting point for Waters who divides the Mankind into Pigs, Dogs and Sheep. Later Gilmour will borrow this concept for "Dogs of War".

Animals is the darkest album of Pink Floyd's discography. It's where the pessimistic vision of Roger Waters reaches its peak. The album opens with a short "dialog". Probably two dogs, intended as cops or soldiers, "watching for pigs on the wings". A short acoustic intro which is effective in introducing "Dogs".

From a musical point of view this is an epic. 17 minutes opened by a jazzy acoustic guitar intro that develop into one of the best suites of the floydian history. A great work from all the band and a special mention for Wright's keyboards. This is the last album on which he features at his best before coming back "to life" on Division Bell. As said before, the dogs are the guardians of the establishment. "You gotta strike when the moment is right without thinking" it's the key sentence. But the dog has doubts. "And when you loose control..." Loosing control means opening his eyes and be able to see a glance of reality. "Sometimes it seems to me as if I'm just being used."

The side A is closed by an indirect description of who the dogs are: the sequence of "who" at the end of the song.

Then the counterpart comes. Pigs are not only the powermen, the governants or the "bosses" of economy. There is a direct reference to Mary Whitehouse: a christian integralist and "moralist" who promoted campaigns against what she called "permissive society". Her movement promoted censorship, in particular the "Clean Up TV". And everything when the Pink Floyd were moving the first steps and the summer of love were close to come. It starts with a keyboard harping on "E- C" on which Waters enters with one of the very few bass solos of his career. Then Gilmour places rhythmic full chords and finally a short drumming introduces the voice of Waters. The song is bluesy, sometimes hard with a long instrumental interlude with a structure similar to some parts of Echoes and Atom Heart Mother.

"You better watch out, there may be dogs about". Speaking about The Final Cut, Waters will explain the meaning of the sentence "everyone has recourse to the law". He thought to situations like when the Nazis were entering jewish houses to take people to the trains, or when in Argentina people was arrested by death squads. In a situation of this kind you don't have recourse to the law, because THEY are the law. This is already inside Sheep. The lyrics are sarcastic. "the Lord is my shepherd", then "we'll make the bugger's eyes water". This is a rocky song, very hard in some parts and another highlight.

The conclusion sees the survived dogs, after the sheep rebellion.

"Now that I've found somewhere safe To bury my bone. And any fool knows a dog needs a home, A shelter from pigs on the wing."

At the end, after all the blood, noting is changed. Somebody thinks that Waters had split "Pigs on the wings" in two to earn more money with the rights. It may be true, but closing the album in the same way as it starts makes absolutely sense.

Another 5 stars.

15+/15P.: an essential listen and, to me, the greatest record ever made. Period.

For the first time in my reviewer's life I am unable to discuss an album as soundly and detailedly as I want to do because the extraordinary emotions and the ocean of impressions which these sounds achieve can never be put in words. The whole is, needless to say, always greater than the sum of its parts, but in this case every attempt to analyze this record (I've tried several times) is guaranteed to be a failure.

I have been listening to music actively since I was about 10 years old, that means for about six or seven years, and up to this year my musical taste changed and developed quite heavily. Art rock blows me away, jazz and classical music are really fine, too, and this year I found out that the popular modern electronic music (Paul Kalkbrenner, Deadmau5, Meck ft. Dino etc.) is a superb continuation of the psychedelic music which I appreciate very much.

But Animals has actually always been my favorite record ever, not only compared to the other Pink Floyd albums but also to the works of all the other bands that I've had the chance to listen to in the last years. It feels as if this record had been done just for me because every note and every sound fits so perfectly well - although it's, of course, more realistic to presume that this record shaped my taste, thus giving me this '100% affinity' feeling.

Similar to Wish You Were Here, on this album the band managed to sum up everything which defines their music: the intense guitar solos, the wonderfully lush keyboard pads (Hammond organ, Solina string machine, Moog synthesizer drones etc.), the meaningful and sometimes sarcastic lyrics and the elaborate production. But what makes this sound even greater is a turn in the band's direction, the inevitable turn towards (relative) simplicity after a period of elaborate experimentalism and/or bombast. There's no orchestra, no saxophone, no female backing vocals, no guest musicians, but just a band which wants to make rock music: rock music which shoots directly in your face (and in your brain), raw power, but at neither place bland or overlong. This does not mean that Pink Floyd move back to the 1960s when they covered "I'm A King Bee" or something like that, but rather that there are, for instance, crystal-clear passages in Dogs without any pads or drones, just with bass guitar, drums, staccato electric piano and guitar improvisations. Pigs is unexpectedly funky (dig that cowbell, man!) whilst the ending of the manic Sheep is plain rock'n'roll transferred to the 1970s. But there is always the detail which decides the pieces, the effect or the sound placed at some place of a song, a simple stereo panning effect, and it all makes every second of this record that fulfilling and uplifting.

Like all the other Pink Floyd albums from 1969 to 1982 it's Roger Waters' split personality which shapes the lyrical component of the music: the man fighting for human rights, for peace and against fascism, but also the man who realises how hard these aims are to achieve, and who sometimes fails to live up to his own expectations: the dichotomy between hope and despair, between wishful and pessimistic thoughts. Anyone who has distinct moral values and who tries to change the system he is in, be it in politics, in public authority or in religious functions, reaches several limits. The limits of the own strength, the limits set by egoistic depots, the limits of systems which, as some would argue, are more fascist than most people guess them to be. Roger Waters knows these limits. And the music which is created by the four band members to equal extents sets this dichotomy between will and power, this abstract and theoretical status, into music and thus into feeling, into something which you can listen to and which you can feel. This is a short, and surely much too rational and formulaic approach to explain the 'magic' which certain people feel when listening to this music, and it also proves that analysis will never be able to fully capture art.

The wishfulness... as I've already stated this mood appears everywhere in the band's work, and it is also evoked here: classic moments are the double-tracked guitar parts and the 5 minutes long hypnotic synthesizer break in Dogs and the two-part frame Pigs On The Wing, proof that Roger Waters is perfectly able to get maximum effect and emotion out of four or five related chords, strummed on the acoustic guitar. Sheep is perhaps the most psychedelic piece on the album, being a more concise version of the band's late-60s one-chord improvisations with a fantastic Fender rhodes introduction and a biting adaptation of the biblic "My Lord is my Shepherd" psalm, spoken through a vocoder with slightly altered words to the steady thunder of Moog synthesizers and bass guitars. (Sadly, Rick Wright abandoned his Clavinet-through-Leslie sound which he used in early live versions of the album tracks in 1974/1975, but this shall and can not be counted as a drawback.)

The big difference to The Wall is that although Roger Waters is the songwriter here, the whole band shapes and coins the music to equal extents. The Wall is a genuine masterpiece, too, but on Animals one instantly feels that these songs weren't recorded by an armada of studio musicians. Don't let yourself fool by 1977, the year when the record was first published: Animals is closer to Dark Side Of The Moon than to The Wall, it was recorded in 1976 and more than 50% of the musical substance were already played the same way in late 1974: Dogs and Sheep are in fact older than some of the Wish You Were Here songs.

So I recommend this album to every interested rock listener since it is a definitive musical statement, a wonderfully balanced record between psychedelia, progressive and blues rock consisting of four songs full of marvellous chords progressions and melodies. 15*/15 points for each and every of the 41 minutes - it's strikingly powerful music that somehow manages to transcend its quite simple structure, and it could be a chance for everyone to see and feel that life is also so much more than what we can analyze by means of science, and so much more than the greed, egoism and opportunism in our world that Roger Waters contempts in the album's lyrics. At least I am given strength by this album every time I listen to it. A masterpiece beyond comparison!

This is often referred to as Pink Floyd's "punk" album, and this description is both apt and completely insane. There can't be any doubt that this is a 100% prog rock album through and through. Aside from the brief opening acoustic ballad "Pigs on the Wing," along with its reprise at album's end, this album consists of a grand total of three tracks, all of which exceed ten minutes in length (with one that's more than seventeen). As usual, the songs consist of long instrumental passages in support of pessimistic, concept-oriented lyrics. So why would punk, which was coming into its own in 1977 with music that was pretty much the opposite of the art rock Pink Floyd had become known for, ever be mentioned in a description of the music found on this album?

Well, it turns out that this album, for all of its similarities to the band's established sound, has a lot of differences that strongly suggest the band had allowed punk to affect it. The last two albums were plenty pessimistic, but their overall tone was more oppressed and depressed than anything else. This album, though, redirects the band's (or rather Waters') pessimistic approach from sad and glum to completely and totally pissed off. The lyrical concept is simple and Orwell- based: all people can be classified as Dogs (cutthroat businessmen and politicians), Pigs (the ruling aristocracy) or Sheep (weak people). It's not just Waters' lyrics that have changed in mood, though. The instrumental parts are MUCH more aggressive than the band had shown at pretty much any time in its history. Mason plays more interesting fills than I'd heard from him since, sheesh, A Saucerful of Secrets, and his drum strikes seem to have greater force than anything I'd ever heard from him. Gilmour's guitar sound has a noticable increase in *OOMPH* and grit from everything he had contributed to the band previously, from harder distortion to a fuller sound to a greater reliance on loud, driving chords than in previous albums. Waters all of a sudden shows off a combination of groove, virtuousity and power that he'd probably always posessed but rarely bothered to demonstrate previously on the band's albums. Wright's style of playing on this album betrays a slight lack of his usual personality, but he's still just as central to the sound as ever, and he deserves plenty of credit for making this album as enjoyable to me as it is. The end result is that this album is clearly a prog rock album, but more than any other Pink Floyd album this is a rock album, and that says something from these guys.

The most significant change from previous albums, overall, is that Waters expanded his (already considerable) control over the band even further. Gilmour has only a single co-writing credit (in "Dogs"), and poor Rick Wright, as prevalent as his keyboards might be on the album, doesn't get any writing credits. Apparently, Wright and Waters had never really gotten along very well in the first place, and this was the point where their differences spilled over into their working relationship. Basically, Waters kept rejecting Wright's ideas, which in turn led to Wright no longer bothering to contribute any ideas, which eventually gave Waters an excuse to fire him ... but that didn't happen for a little while. Point is, this album is Waters' baby through and through, and marks the point where the others essentially became his backing band. Still, while they might have been treated as session musicians on this album, they certainly made the best of the situation and made their parts as interesting as they needed to be. It somewhat helps that the songs were apparently reworked versions of pieces that had been written by the whole band in years past, so while Waters got final credit for them, they actually had significant input from everybody in at least some form.

"Pigs on the Wing," split into two parts and bookending the album, is a pleasant enough simple acoustic ballad with an ambiguous lyrical message that really sounds nothing like anything else here. From the sweet acoustic lines of "Pigs on the Wing" we move into the driving acoustic part, underpinned by moody synths, that opens up the absolute magnificence that is "Dogs." Supposedly, Dave never really liked singing the lyrics assigned to him in this part, but he shows a lot of passion in delivering these lines about what it's like to live among those who have to hunt down and kill others in order to get ahead in life (and how it just gets harder and harder as you get older, until it's time to retire and wait for your empty life to end). The piece morphs into a lengthy instrumental passage with two different, equally great themes (and some of my absolute favorite Gilmour solos ever), eventually coming to a menacing mid-tempo section featuring Dave and Roger singing together. This section absolutely rocks, particularly the underpinning of one of my favorite lyrics from the band ever, "And it's too late to lose the weight you used to need to throw around."

The section ends with a resounding, "Dragged down by the stone (stone ... stone ... stone ... stone ...)," which leads into my favorite instrumental passage on the album. The next five minutes or so are nothing but Wright's synths mixed with sound effects designed to create the effect of slowly drowning and hearing a bunch of dog voices above the water. There's that cool synth effect that prolongs and mimics the "stone ... stone ... stone ..." line, those bits of processed howling and barking, and overall there's Wright, playing notes that are seemingly directionless and never ending but are SO effective in setting the right mood. Coming out of that we have a reprise of the opening acoustic-driven theme, only with Waters singing this time. It builds into yet another instrumental stretch that rocks like mad, before Waters sings the final 'verse' and everything comes crashing down on another, "Dragged down by the stone!"

Side two opens with "Pigs (Three Different Ones)," which I consider the weakest of the three but is nonetheless extremely enjoyable. The bulk of the track is based around the same rhythm track, featuring a bassline from Waters that's a weird combination of hard rock, art rock and some kind of stiff funk, and while I could see getting irritated with its monotony, I enjoy it way too much. The verses (all sung by Waters) are an attack on British politics, alternating between Waters all-out belting and singing quieter with some subtle effect on his voice (unless that's actually just him making his own voice sound a little off). The mid-section consists of a mid-tempo, nearly unchanging jam mixing a light synth covering and Gilmour having fun with a guitar effect that mimics pig grunts and squeals. I know people who hate it, and occasionally I start to wonder, "Man, how much longer does this last," but most of the time I'm perfectly happy to lose myself in the sound. And oh man, is that a POWERFUL sounding solo from Dave over the song's lengthy ending and fadeout, with the noises of sheep slowly creeping up.

"Sheep" opens up with a moody electric piano solo, kinda reminiscient of the one from "Riders on the Storm" (at least in tone), before the drums break in and Waters starts singing. This track is just full of awesome bits, the first of which is the way Roger sings, "Helplessly passing your time in the grassland awaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay" and the last vocal sound morphs seamlessly into one of Wright's synth tones before Gilmour caps it with a *BAAAAAAM* sound from his guitar (with the same sort of thing happening on the next sung line, and reprised later). Gilmour's guitars are just set to balls-out RAWK on this track, from the aforementioned loud chords to the cool short breaks he throws in to the lengthy fadeout. Wright plays a lot of loud Hammond organ along with his usual synths, Waters plays a bunch of cool basslines, Mason rocks as well as he ever has, and the overall effect is stunning. Plus, the track has a cool midsection with a quiet voice speaking a variation of the 23rd Psalm through a vocoder, before building into the final sung verses, which include another one of my favorite Floyd lyrics ever ("Wave upon wave of demented avengers march cheerfully out of obscurity into the dream"). Awesome.

And that's the album in all of its splendor. I can understand the reasons why this album is largely forgotten by casual Pink Floyd fans, but frankly none of these reasons speak in favor of said fans. The songs are long, and the lyrics are very angry and misanthropic in tone, but the songs are great and the lyrics are clever, so those should hardly be considered problems. Credit should also be given to the band for proving that they could make a top-rate album without any guest stars (except for Snowy White playing guitar on "PotW"), whereas the albums surrounding it belonged as much to the guest star performances, vocal samples, various sound effects and producers as to the band. This is the "pure" Pink Floyd not seen since Meddle, even if the style is drastically different, and it's a joy to behold. A must own.

PS: Supposedly, this album works in a synchronicity with Casablanca. Anybody actually tried this?

PPS: From college until I started full-time employment, I had the following as a custom license plate: POTW3. I'm such a geek.

I find it staggering that I have been here so long, and yet it has taken me until now to review one of the most fundamentally important albums in my collection, and, indeed, my life.

In 1977, punk rock was raging across the UK (to a lesser extent elsewhere as well), and THE band that the gobbing yoofs decided to target more than any other was The Floyd, supposedly the epitome of dinosaur rock; boring, overlong symphonic suites, and with no relevance whatsoever to life in the depressed mid 1970's. I should add as a backdrop that Britain in 1977 was not exactly a bundle of fun. The economy had stalled, unemployment was a real issue, especially for the disaffected youth, strikes abounded, and nobody seemed to have a clue as to how to address this (if this sounds familiar to the present situation, then that is because it is). Punk was the reaction against all of this.

So, what does a band of the "old guard" go and do? Well, what they release is easily the finest punk rock album of all time. Yes, that's right, a punk rock album, because, as a teenager around this time, I remember the movement and its supposed raison d'etre very well. It was supposed to rail and rant against the established order, thus providing the kids with an outlet with which to change things.

Just listen to Dogs, quite possibly Waters' finest lyrical moment amongst a crowded field. It exemplifies the bitterness that many felt (and continue to feel) against the idol, greedy, selfish classes. Content to feed off of others labours, living a life of a leech, bleeding others dry until, one day, your life crimes catch up with you, and you die of the massive stroke your indulgences and life crimes deserve, unloved, and missed by none except, possibly, close family. Heavy stuff, this track, more than any other, shaped my lifetime political views.

Pigs takes the mickey perfectly out of the ruling classes (the establishment), whilst Sheep is a direct pop at the rest of us, the "ordinary" people, for following said classes like lemmings into oblivion.

Musically, it is unrelentingly gloomy, again capturing perfectly the times. Richard Wright, although not contributing a single note in the writing, performs perfectly on the keys to cast an overall cloudy feel. Gilmour is nigh on perfect, whilst Mason provides a steady hand at the tiller.

The star, though, is Waters. His bass performance is workmanlike, but this is an album that is as important, no more so, for its words as it is for a musical performance. He was, of course, revolting against the untold riches that the success of the previous two albums had brought him and his colleagues, this going against the grain of all his personal beliefs.

At the end of it all, Waters has the sound and feel of a man who has laid himself open to the world, and tries to redeem himself - "You know that I care..... what happens to you".

Pink Floyd released many albums that were easier on the ear. You simply cannot compare this to the likes of Meddle or Wish You Were Here. However, in terms of the relevance of the band in the society in which they played, this is their definitive work. It is an extremely difficult album to enjoy, but patience rewards itself amply. For when you "get it", you realise that Waters speaks for an entire generation.

Five stars - a masterpiece of progressive, or, indeed, any other form, of rock music. Utterly essential in my opinion, and an album I will take to my dying day.

Recorded in 1976, when the punk scene in the UK was rapidly attaining notoriety through raucous live shows and a confrontational attitude but had not as yet begin the wave of album releases which would drive prog off the charts, Animals finds Pink Floyd looking at the waves of angry young men in "I hate Pink Floyd" shirts and thinking to themselves "Hey, you know what? *We* hate Pink Floyd too!"

All jokes about the increasingly poisonous interpersonal situation in the band aside, Animals finds the group crafting a murky, mildly grimy sound miles away from the clean, sterile atmosphere of Wish You Were Here, in which they explore thematic territory that is just as angry, cynical and accusatory as the punks were dredging up. Of course, this was not purely a reaction to the antics of the Damned, the Clash or the Sex Pistols - there's anger there in Wish You Were Here - but in crafting a more intimate sound and making more direct attacks on the objects of their disapproval (devastatingly so on Pigs (Three Different Ones)), the band appear to have recognised the mood of the time, as well as the increasing gap growing between them and their audience.

Nick Mason has said he was glad to see the punk revolution shaking up the musical scene and resurrecting the underground vibe of Floyd's early days, but it seems that he wasn't alone in the band in feeling more affinity with the angry punk audiences than the chirpy mainstream crowds who wanted another Dark Side of the Moon; Waters and Gilmour's compositions and the band's overall performance on Animals speaks to a powerful desire to return to the underground, and Waters' increasing lack of sympathy for his audience would lead to the infamous spitting incident on tour, which in turn led to the Wall - the album which both ended the run of universally-acclaimed Floyd albums and, arguably, made the eventual Waters- Gilmour split inevitable. But Animals is more than a mere sign of the times - it's also a third masterpiece in a row for a band who at this stage could do no wrong.

The undisputed kings of Progressive Rock, Pink Floyd were the group who truly broke through into the mainstream conciousness, pulling off the remarkable trick of creating compelling, highly-progressive music and selling hundreds of millions of records worldwide, equalling the likes of The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin for sheer international popularity. Indeed, in all the history of Rock music there have been few bigger bands. Led during their formative years by the enigmatic lyricist, vocalist and guitarist Syd Barrett, Pink Floyd had been at the very forefront of the underground psychedelic movement that sparked into life during the late-sixties, releases such as their densely-cosmic debut 'Piper At The Gates Of Dawn' and the bizarre double-album 'Ummagumma' showcasing an extremely imaginative quartet of musicians who were willing to push the boundaries of popular music as far as they could. By the beginning of the 1970's, however, it seemed as if the dream was over. Barrett, who loved psychedelic drugs as much as the girls loved his handsome good looks, had completely overdone the LSD and subsequently fried his brain to the point where it made him unable to either perform live or function within the confines of a professional band. He was subsequently replaced by his ex-Schoolmate Dave Gilmour(vocals, guitar) and the music press, rather hastily it must be said, began to write Pink Floyd's obituaries, thinking that the game was up for the four-piece without their primary creative force. Fast forward seven years, however, and the group, which still featured original members Roger Waters(bass, vocals), Richard Wright(keyboards, vocals) and Nick Mason(drums) alongside Gilmour, had enjoyed unprecedented success with a series of ground-breaking albums that started with the brass-heavy 1969 effort 'Atom Heart Mother' and continued with the mysterious 'Meddle'(1971), the super smash-hit 'Dark Side Of The Moon'(1973) and the emotionally-charged follow-up 'Wish You Were Here'(1975). The group's next challenge would be to navigate the vicious punk onslaught that was ripping through British rock music's old guard(and particularly progressive rock groups) and 1977's thoroughly downbeat 'Animals' album, which was loosely-based on George Orwell's satirical fable 'Animal Farm', would be Pink Floyd's extraordinary and darkly-wrought response. In the classic prog-rock style 'Animals' would feature just five tracks, two of which would clock in at around the one minute mark and act as the albums prologue and epilogue respectively. Featuring just Roger Waters broken vocals over the top of a sparsely- strummed acoustic guitar melody, 'Pigs On The Wing' and 'Pigs On The Wing(Three Different Ones') act almost as the quiet before the storm, their gentle, stripped-back vibe exuding rare moments of clarity. The remaining three tracks, however, would all last in excess of ten minutes and find Pink Floyd exhibiting a dank, nihilistic streak and, lyrically speaking, at their most acerbic, with the stand-out 'Dogs' reaching just under twenty minutes. With it's juddering bass-lines, spacey keyboard effects and frightening lyrical content 'Dogs' would be the only piece on the album not to be written and sung solely by Waters, with Gilmour lending his gruff vocals to what can be only be described as one of the gloomiest Pink Floyd compositions. Featuring themes that meditate on death, disease, greed and loss, the bulk of 'Animals' is seen by many as the absolute antithesis to the hopeful material found on 'Wish You Were Here'. 'Dogs', it's rumbling follow-up 'Pigs' and the psychedelic-flecked 'Sheep' would find a group gradually moving away from their melodic origins, creating rough, discordant and seemingly hopeless meditations on the state of 1970s Britain that seemed to aim much of it's abrasive criticism directly at the policies of then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and her right-wing government. Whilst also being a reaction to punk rock 'Animals' was also the album on which the first cracks in the relationship between the main creative forces of Gilmour and Waters would start to show, the duo apparently finding it difficult to now work in the same room together. From the outside it seemed as if Waters was slowly taking over the group and dictating the overall direction, and his methods alienated not only Gilmour but also keyboardist Richard Wright, who hardly features throughout the album. However, despite the ongoing concerns regarding the inter-band relationships, it didn't affect the quality of the music. 'Animals' would mark yet another outstanding chapter in the Pink Floyd story, spinning a darkly ominous musical tale that seemed a million miles away from the more upbeat material being produced by the likes of Yes and Genesis, two groups who were not adapting well to the changing musical climate. Although 'Animals' would find Pink Floyd at their least commercial, it also found the group at their most daring and creative, showing that, amongst many other things, the genre of progressive rock could also exhibit it's rarely- shown dark-side without stifling the instrumental complexity that is so important. In the face of so much criticism from both press and public, 'Animals' is very much the sound of Pink Floyd baring their teeth, flexing their muscles and fighting back.

Well, this Pink Floyd album is rather rock oriented, It doesn't follow the atmospheric blueprint of the previous album, "Wish You Were Here". Although it is good that Pink Floyd did not keep copying the same ideas, I do prefer the more atmospheric approach. WYWH hums with an energy that draws you in to the music. I feel that Animals does not do so very well.

"Animals" has some great tracks, however. I feel that the last 3 tracks on the album are the strongest. And, with the iconic artwork, this album is certainly a solid piece of Pink Floyd's discography. Yet, the prominence of rocky tunes takes away from it a bit for me. Don't get me wrong, I love the guitar work, as Gilmour is one of the greatest guitarists ever; but I miss the more keyboard driven style. With that said, can Gilmour create an UNmemorable guitar solo? It doesn't seem like he is capable of this. All in all, a great album from one of the greatest bands to grace our planet.

Of all Floyd albums I have, this one is probably the biggest reach in terms of ambition and scale, but also sound. And yet it's also my favorite Floyd album of all time.

If you think that makes no sense, well, yes, you're right. It makes zero sense. Let's see if I can try to make it make sense.

By know you probably know that "Animals" is loosely based off the novel Animal Farm by "everyone's favorite communist" George Orwell, so the lyrical subject matter is based off similar themes presented in the book.

Of course I could care less about lyrical themes, I'm a musician, I need the music, and luckily for me, there's plenty of music. But while "Wish You Were Here" chugged along at a steady speed, there wasn't a whole lot of activity, save for the intermittent guitar solo and electronic ambiance. "Animals" is a bit different though. The pace is still quite leisurely, but there seems to be quite a lot more going on without dismissing their signature jams. "Pigs" is an excellent example. The addition of voicebox "wah-wahs" as I call them add a cool effect to the traditional Floydian jam, but the verses and choruses by Waters add additional elements that don't seem out of place, but they also don't sound like they're just offspring of the main jam and the body of the song like "Shine On You Crazy Diamond".

It is a rather different album than previous discs. "Dark Side" took the tunes and squished the length of the jams and soundscapes into individual tracks, or between verses and choruses. "Wish You Were Here" opened them up and expanded them into the actual songs, keeping catchy choruses to a minimum and leaving the main jams as the body of the song. "Animals" though, has a trend of interspersing these jams between different verses of different textures, especially on "Dogs", where there isn't really a chorus per se, but a number of verses that connect through slow jams and synth-swathed soundscapes, all the while dogs are howling int he background as their masters whistle to them. The jams are there, but they just seem a bit more... sophisticated here.

Same thing with "Sheep". Wright's absolutely hypnotic intro is full of bluesy, jazzy goodness that you'd expect another 10 minute jam, and so you relax in your recliner and get ready for the long haul. Except less than 2 minutes in Waters comes belting out of nowhere and shakes yo up, as if he doesn't want you to sleep. But that's a good thing though, because apart from the reprise of "Pigs On The Wing", this is the true closer, and it's a beauty. This is the first Floyd track in a while that really seems to pick up steam, a song that wants to push forward. I also hear an odd similarity to "One Of These Days" in here as well, or is it just me?

Either way, Animals is my champion of the Floyd discography. It's just a fun listen, it's loaded with jams, it's great to rock out to. Now, it's not as catchy as "Wish You Were Here", but I definitely considered this to be their apex of their careers. With "Dark Side", "Wish You Were Here" and now "Animals", the fun could only last so long, and after "The Wall", the party was well and truly over, but it left behind some tunes no one will ever forget.

Review Nº 37

For the vast majority of the progressive rock fans, Pink Floyd can be considered as one of the best and most recognized bands in the progressive rock movement from the 70's, together with Yes and Genesis. We can even consider that those bands were, in a certain way, practically the founders and the most creative of the progressive rock music. They are probably also the bands that most have influenced the progressive groups, until today.

This is my third review of a Pink Floyd's album. "Animals" belongs to the famous trilogy of the greatest masterpieces of the band, starting with their eighth studio album "The Dark Side Of The Moon" released in 1973, followed by their ninth studio album "Which You Were Here" released in 1975 and ending with "Animals", their tenth studio album released in 1977. It was recorded at the band's studio, the Britannia Row Studios, in London, and was released by Harvest Records in the UK and by Columbia Records in the USA. With the exception of "Dogs", which was co-written with David Gilmour, all the five tracks on the album were written by Roger Waters. Curiously, "Animals" was the band's first album not to include a writing credit by Richard Wright. Those were probably, the early signs of discord inside the group, which several years later would culminate with Wright leaving the band, due to problems with Waters.

Of all the classic Pink Floyd albums, "Animals" is the strangest and darkest of all. It's a conceptual album, based on the George Orwell's political fable the "Animal Farm", where various groups in the society are represented as animals. The dogs represent the law, the pigs represent the leaders and the sheep represent the people. On the album, Waters equal the humans to each of those three animals' species. The dogs represent the megalomaniacal businessmen that end up being dragged into what they created. The pigs represent the corrupt politicians and also the moralists. The sheep represent those who don't fit into these two categories, which without thinking blindly follow a leader. Despite the Orwell's novel is focused on the Stalinist communism, the album is a critic to the worst aspects of the capitalism.

"Animals" has five tracks. The first track "Pigs On The Wing" is divided in two parts, and is the smallest track on the album. "Pigs On The Wing (Part 1)" opens de album and has only 1:25 minutes long and "Pigs On The Wing (Part 2)" closes de album and has precisely the same time. "Pigs On The Wing" is a love song written by Waters for his wife, Caroline, at the time. The message of this song is that when two people love each other, they can protect themselves from the evils of the world, referred on the other three songs. Waters refers to himself as a dog in the second part of the song. Musically, the song is simply constructed and features no instrumentation besides an acoustic guitar played by him. The second track "Dogs" is the lengthiest song on the album. Gilmour and Waters share vocal duties on the song. Gilmour sings the majority of the song, but Waters sings the last two verses. During the theme, we can hear the Wright's synthesizer solo and the sounds of dogs barking, on the back. Gilmour made brilliant mixes, with acoustic and electric guitars, together. The third track "Pigs (Three Different Ones)" is the heaviest track on the album and is a song more in the rock vein. It's the most aggressive song on the album and has very aggressive political lyrics, too. Halfway through the song, Gilmour uses a "Heil Talk Box" on the guitar solo, to mimic the sound of the pigs. The fourth track "Sheep" is probably my favourite song on the album. It has a delightful Wright's keyboard work, while Waters sings and plays rhythm guitar and Gilmour plays an outstanding bass guitar brilliantly on a simply and amazing way. For a Pink Floyd's album which is so clearly dominated by Waters, the Gilmour's guitars dominate throughout the album, but we have also the Wright's keyboards rarely rising above a mood-setting on the background.

Conclusion: For many of you, "Animals" is probably the last album released by Pink Floyd that can achieve the status of a masterpiece. Sincerely, I don't completely agree with that point of view. I really think that we can't forget their famous eleventh studio album "The Wall", released in 1979 despite is probably an album less progressive than their three previous studio works. In any case and in my humble opinion, "Animals" is one of the three best albums of the group, and one of the best albums ever made, in any time, by any band. Anyway and undoubtedly, "Animals" is one of the Pink Floyd's lesser known albums and is for sure the less known album of their trilogy. Of course it's not as easily accessible as "The Dark Side Of The Moon", it's for sure less personal than "Wish You Were Here" and it has a less interesting story and less familiar songs than "The Wall". It's shorter than most of the Pink Floyd's albums, too. But it's surely a great Pink Floyd album and that can be considered a true landmark in the progressive rock music. By the way, please read "Animal Farm", if you didn't read it before. It's a great novel which never gets old with the years.

Prog is my Ferrari. Jem Godfrey (Frost*)

If you've scrolled this far down on the album's page, then you've probably already read the entire Pink Floyd band biography as well as the allegorical and sociopolitical/philosophical/whatever significance of the album's lyrics countless times. So I'm going to skip over that preamble and cut to the chase with the music.

"Animals", as we all know, represents a shift into much darker territory that Pink Floyd's earlier spacey musings had seldom touched. Whether this was a response to the punk movement or a reflection on English society at the time, I think it was a well- needed change. Floyd's previous releases, "Dark Side" and "Wish You Were Here", while containing some strong music, were on the whole very monochromatic and, frankly, sterile. This is not the case with "Animals". For the first time in a while, Pink Floyd has actually decided to expand past their typical tepid productions and create an album that rocks.

The meat of this album, of course, is contained in the three long pieces. Let it be said that "Dogs" is a masterpiece. Containing a very quick opening by Pink Floyd standards, it is here that Floyd realize how essential tension and release are to creating cathartic music. And man does it work. Ranging from tense ostinato-ed verses that give a sense of paranoia to spacey psychedelic interludes to more straightforward rock-oriented sections, the change of pace in "Dogs" is paramount at setting up Gilmour's best solo of his career, played not just once over the course of the song, but twice. Yes, that vast, expansive, Floydian wall of guitar sound that we all know and love, but this time accentuated so much more when put in the proper context. One other strength of "Animals" worth noting is that the use of sound effects is very effective. While dogs barking and pigs snorting could come across as a complete corn-ball cliche, on "Animals" they actually blend very well into the overall sound, heightening the atmosphere of the album.

There are only two real points of contention on this album as far as I'm concerned. The first is the inconsequential "Pigs On The Wing" pieces, which are not terrible, but certainly not necessary. The second is the tendency for "Pigs (Three Different Ones)" to overstay its welcome a tad with its very repetitive riff. While the song contains some very strong moments, such as one of Gilmour's most explosive solos closer to the end, it's enough for me to demote "Animals" from full masterpiece status.

Minor flaws aside, this barnyard triptych is one of Pink Floyd's best offerings. It's also worthy of the title "Pink Floyd for those who don't like Pink Floyd". 4 solid stars.

So, looking through my reviews, I was shocked to see that I haven't reviewed this album yet. I love pretty much all of Pink Floyd's albums, but I have to say that this is my favorite of all of them. Out of the 5 tracks, 3 of them are epic, progressive pieces. There have already been a lot of reviews for this album, so a lot of what I can say about it has already been said. It is a very strong social/political album, inspired by the book 'Animal Farm' written by George Orwell. In it, there are 3 types of animals, Dogs, Pigs and Sheep. In the songs, businessmen, millionaires, the clergy, politicians, religious organizations and follower, and so on are targeted and compared to these animals. The messages in these songs seem to be more and more timely as the years roll on, and listening to the lyrics will convince you that they apply now more than ever.

Most people on Prog Archives have heard and love this album. But for the layman, the songs are broken down as 3 long, epic songs bookended by two short tracks which are parts 1 and 2 of a mostly acoustic song called 'Pigs on the Wing'. Both parts are relatively short. However, on the 8-track edition, this song was place on the 1st track and was not separated in 2 parts. It also had an electric guitar solo which is not heard on any other format. The solo was performed by Snowy White, who was part of Al Stewart's band. Snowy White apparently had recorded other solos, and the band was considering bringing him in as a regular member. Unfortunately, the tracks that had White's solos were lost and so he recorded this solo which was only used on the 8-track edition.

After Part 1 of 'Pigs on the Wing', 'Dogs' takes up all of the rest of the first side of the album. At over 17 minutes, this is probably the best song, even out of all of Floyd's amazing music, that the group ever made. I find those 17 minutes fly by before you know it. The track is composed of several rhythm changes, different musical themes, many different moods and so on. Yet it holds together so well. Everything on this song, and on this album for that matter, just gels so well together. There is absolutely no feeling of disjointedness on this album. This track is so daring, so innovative and just amazing. So many reviewers have broken it down, so I don't see the point in doing it all again. Most people that are reading this have already heard these songs and know how they are, but if you haven't, then the best way to experience it is to listen for yourself.

Next comes 'Pigs (Three Different Ones'. This track takes up half of the 2nd side and instantly starts with an infectious guitar hook. This one doesn't change as much as 'Dogs' but it has several moods changes and returns to the main theme by the end of the song. I love the vocal processing that is used on this track as it invokes so many different moods and feelings. This one is overall harder than 'Dogs', with some great keyboard and guitar solos. The giant pig balloon on the cover ties into this track. The balloon was actually made by the same company that made the Led Zeppelin balloon. It was used as a publicity stunt to advertise the record, but it broke free of its moorings, scared a few pilots and citizens, and landed in a farmer's field disturbing his livestock. That field later was bought by an orange man who built a hotel on top of it.

Okay so maybe I took some dramatic license for that last statement. But wouldn't that be quite the coincidence?

The next track takes up most of the rest of the 2nd side and is called 'Sheep'. This one specifically targets religion and the sheep are the followers of those organizations. Everyone knows of the processed voice reciting a changed version of the famous 'The Lord is My Shepherd' psalm. Several churches condemned the album because of this and actually told their congregations not to buy it. This has more of an improvised feel to it as far as the instrumental breaks go.

Of course, the last track is the short 2nd part of 'Pigs on the Wing' which is similar to the 1st part with a different verse.

All three songs feature the sound effects of the various animals that the songs are made for. These effects are also processed to sound different and add a lot of atmosphere to the entire album. The sounds are accompanied, when the appear in the songs, by softer, yet eerie breaks to make things sound ominous, threatening and mysterious. The singing, musicianship, production, instrumentals, sound effects, everything about this album is just perfect. Everything fits in its place. The construction of the songs is amazing. I honestly can't say enough about this. But it goes beyond words. The best way to experience this album is to listen to it.

Of course, this is an essential prog masterpiece and deserves every one of the 5 stars. In my own personal rating system, it gets that rare extra star, 6 stars, that denotes a perfect album. Definitely one of my 'deserted island' albums.

After the masterpiece "Wish You Were Here", full of slow ballads where the keyboards and synths played by Wright occupy the scene, comes Animals, a concept album based on the book Animal's Farm by George Orwell.

1. Pigs On The Wing Part 1 (1:25) is an acoustic intro, a lost chance because the melody is good but the song is too short.

2. Dogs (17:04) is considered the album's masterpiece, it's a 17-minute suite, which begins with rhythmic acoustic guitar, gritty Waters' voice, and keyboard carpet. Around 3'45'' comes a Gilmour riff which became very famous. Overall, the suite is a dilated song, based on drums, acoustic and electric guitar support and voice, sober as arrangements, more rock than the previous PF songs, with Gilmour's solo guitar in evidence. After 8 minutes the suite is finished, in fact we go back to the initial carpet of keyboards, time stops, static music is dilated in a rather long-winded and not very significant way. Then the same initial sequence starts again: acoustic guitars, vocals, drums, electric guitar solo. It doesn't seem to me like a great masterpiece. It is a song that has lost all progressive and psychedelic thrust, and that has more than anything else the grit of rock in Waters' voice and in Gilmour's solo. A song that is better when it is played live. Rating 8.

End of side A.

3. Pigs (Three Different Ones) (11:28) The song has an excellent beginning, bass and keyboards, vaguely psychedelic, then the rhythm begins with the singing. We are facing another rock ballad conducted by drums, vocals, electric guitar. Then there is a wonderful, obsessive long instrumental passage, with acid sounds, then another time the vocals by Waters, and the final solo by Gilmour. Rating 8,5.

4. Sheep (10:16) Sheep is a 10-minute mini suite that starts slowly, with a piece of keyboards and bass of almost two minutes that is not very useful, then the rock rhythm singing begins, which we have already heard in the two previous songs, but faster. Then there are some nice instrumental passages between keyboards and bass by Waters, in evidence. In the end, the rhythmic music starts again. In this song, the sung part and the instrumental part are not well integrated. Rating 7.5 / 8.

5. Pigs On The Wing Part 2 (1:25) is another useless musical piece.

With "Animals", Pink Floyd became the group of Roger Waters. He is the singer-songwriter who leads the group to develop a politically committed rock music album, with three long, dilated songs that have little to do with progressive and psychedelia. They are conventional rock songs in terms of structure and arrangement, without significant changes in rhythm and style, very homogeneous. Only in some instrumental situations there are art-rock passages (in addition to the sounds of animals). "Animals" is therefore the transition album to the third phase of Pink Floyd: The first is the psychedelic one, which goes from 1967 to 1970. The second is the progressive one, which starts with "Atom Heart Mother" and ends with "Wish You Were" (1975), where the songs are very dilated but also very accurate for arrangement and where the Wright's keabords are in evidence.

With Animals begins the third phase, that of "auteur rock", where Roger Waters is the boss of the group, where the lyrics matter more than the music. Here in Animals, to be honest, the music prevails over the lyrics and the songs are still long, similar to "Wish You Were Here", but more sober as an arrangement, with Wright's work on the background, and from the following "The Wall" the songs will become medium length, if not short, and the background music will be classic rock with orchestral and sometimes experimental arrangements. The golden age of progressive PF is over but Waters will be able to churn out two excellent albums as a singer-songwriter accompanied by the rest of the group.

Total Time: 41:38

Side A: 8, Side B: 8+.

Rating Album: 8,5. Four Stars.

The album prior to global mega success The Wall, shows us the great state of form of Pink Floyd, despite the fact that there are already multiple conflicts between Roger Waters and the rest of the band. Animals has little to do with the atmospheric travels of his previous albums and spatial references, and increasingly focuses on the problematic relationships between power and politics, morality and acid criticism of the type of personalities who rule the world, of which Waters feels increasingly disenchanted, and he divides the album into 3 parts, each represented by a type of animal, which categorizes humans: the materialists, who want to achieve their goals no matter how, and end their days alone and sick. , as a consequence of the arrogant acts in his life (Dogs), the false moralists, who want to project a moralistic and decent image more by appearances and private interests than by conviction (Pigs), and ordinary people, who in the end are the flock (Sheep), who pays for the consequences of dog and pig abuse.

The 3 songs maintain a superlative level, being Dogs with its 17 minutes what I consider musically outstanding, Gilmour's acoustic guitars and the development of the entire musical concept, and the ending with all the "who's" is simply incredible. One of the best Pink Floyd songs of all time without a doubt. Pigs very close to that level too, Richard Wright's keyboards and Gilmour's guitars with a flawless solo finish, are the best of the song. Sheep is also a very good one but I think it is one step below the previous ones.

The album starts and closes the same song but with different lyrics (Pigs On The Wing 1 and 2), each of just over 1 minute, a beautiful composition played only with acoustic guitar and Waters voice, highly recommended for who like unplugged sounds.

Animals is an album that is part of the most relevant works of Pink Floyd and an essential piece for every progressive fan.