My thoughts on ANIMUS, the third in a new series of digital singles from miscast.

Release Date: April 15th 2021

Tracklist

1. ANIMUS

I sort of feel like at this point in the whole global pandemic deal most people fall into one of two camps when it comes to Idol music. You’re either feeling starved of new songs to listen to (or content in general) because the group(s) you mainly follow haven’t been super active throughout this whole mess for whatever reason, or you’re probably spoiled for choice because you’re fortunate enough to be a fan of some who have really embraced this whole digital revolution that has been forced on the scene over the past year or so.

If you’re a fan of miscast then the past year has been absolutely insane as far as the group’s musical output is concerned. It feels like we’ve probably averaged just about a song a month over that time period so it’s fair to say that they’ve been rather busy. The amount of variety they’ve been offering too is also impressive with a whole host of influences and collaborations being adopted into the group’s base Hardcore sound. The results have been generally very positive and for my money you’ll struggle to find many groups who are more prolific than this one is right now as far as putting out high quality new music on a consistent basis.

The third in this run of digital singles sees the group team up with several collaborators for “ANIMUS”, which looks like it has more features than your local movie theater. We’ve got KOUTA from THOUSAND EYES arranging the guitars, Daisuke from SEVER BLACK PARANOIA on synths and screams and Miura Shion from NINJA PUBLIC writing Rap lyrics and also providing guest vocals on said parts of the track. There’s a lot going into this one folks, so I’m interested to hear if it’s all going to work together or if it’s going to be a case of too many cooks in the kitchen. With that said, let’s take a listen and see what miscast and their various collaborators have in store for us on this one.

There’s a bit of an Industrial feel to the track’s opening instrumental which perhaps unsurprisingly brings together various Hardcore and synthesizer elements to craft something of a fairly dark Digital Hardcore sound. Very heavily distorted and with some almost unpleasantly high pitched synthesizer noise by the time the track really start to get some legs under itself, but the vocals are doing a good job of evening it all out with their very melodic but also heavily vocoded style that they’ve chosen to approach this with. There are some more natural tones in there too but it’s hard not to get swept up in everything else going on. Especially when everything else going on includes some pretty squealy harsh vocals from Daisuke at times, though Miura Shion’s contribution is a lot more understated by comparison and the track definitely doesn’t have as heavy of a lean into Rap as you would have though that it might have which was a rather nice surprise for me honestly.

The choruses are very bright and pretty heavy on the vocoding but you sorta need that to keep the rest of the track in check honestly and the lyrical hooks are rather strong here which gives the ears something a bit more conventional to latch onto after being assaulted from all sides during the verses. Still rather busy and bruising on the instrumental side of things but in a very bright way if that makes any sense. I thought it was pretty cool that they managed to continue the intensity throughout the track despite the several stylistic changes along the way as it would have been easy to bail out and try something else in a few spots. They didn’t though and I think the track is all the better for it.

“ANIMUS” is perhaps the most ambitious collaboration that miscast have attempted thus far and while it did lead to a lot going on on the track I would have to say that it all worked out rather well. Everyone has a part to play and they play it well, which makes for a very impressive end product assuming you’re into the sort of genres, screaming and what have you that present here. I imagine you probably already know if you are or not if you’re reading this though.

I suppose the only real point of debate here is at what point does this stop being an Idol song and become “X” song that just happens to feature some. I don’t really care myself honestly, I’m just here for a good time, but it’s something you could probably discuss if you really want to. miscast look to keep doing their thing though and why wouldn’t they when it leads to results like this? I’m really looking forward to what they do next and who they end up doing it with so hopefully they won’t keep us waiting too long on that front. Until then though, we have 3 pretty cool tracks to enjoy here and I’m going to go and do just that I think.