Video of the Week: Animals and Men
We try to keep a healthy balance of the old and the new here at Maximum Rocknroll, and ANIMALS AND MEN embodies the best of both worlds. They are a great, fairly obscure DIY-style punk band that started in the ’70s, inspired by the likes of Adam & the Ants and Pere Ubu. They later evolved into the impressive minimalist punk/blues band THE TERRAPLANES, and eventually faded away. But as with so many unsung gems of punk’s past they were rediscovered and re-issued in the ’00s on Hyped To Death‘s Messthetics CD series, and an LP reissue on Mississippi Records of their three 45s and early demos.
And as seems to be de rigueur nowadays, they went ahead and reformed, played some gigs, and got some new material together to record a 12″, which was released in 2009 on Convulsive Records. As predictable as all of this is, the real shocker is that the new record is fucking great! In this writer’s opinion, it’s at least as good as the old stuff. To prove the point, here is a live version of “John of the Sword” from said 12″, which I guarantee to get stuck in your head, in a good way…
