The Sound of Animals Fighting

A reissue of their now out-of-print debut, Tiger & The Duke is an excellent reminder of just how absolutely horrible its follow-up, 2006’s Lover, The Lord Has Left Us, was. For anyone not familiar with the interesting-if-pretentious prog punk style of the Sound of Animals Fighting, they function as some kind of hippie-esque anonymous musical collective containing members of bands such as RX Bandits and Circa Survive, all wearing animal masks and going by names like "the Nightingale.” Yeah. Somehow the whole thing came together nicely with Tiger & The Duke though, which stands as a solid collection of abrasive, melodic musical movements and elongated interludes. The good songs here are really good and well worth wading through the filler. Making this reissue all the more enticing for uber-fans is the inclusion of eight remixes of songs from Lover, all of which are about one trillion times better than the actual album was and prove that somewhere, deep in all its horrific pretentiousness, were some worthwhile songs.