Review Summary: Aww look at what Nancy drew.....
17 years after the titanic
The Ocean and the Sun helped legitimize and popularize (it charted on Billboard 200!) progressive post-hardcore, a movement that has since largely gone by the wayside, the older, greyer, and certainly more tired lads of The Sounds of Animals Fighting have finally released
The Maiden, a disjointed and bipolar collection of songs that in many ways betray what The Sound of Animals Fighting currently is, a side gig. In fact, at least 4 members of the band -- Steve Choi (Hard Chiller), Anthony Green (L.S. Dunes, Self-Titled), Matt Embree (Self-Titled), and Rich Balling (Pyramids) -- already have releases in 2025 with other projects. This wouldn’t be a problem at all if
The Maiden didn’t suffer mightily from numerous head-scratching decisions that dredge up the unfortunate notion that perhaps the project was relegated to the backburner. And while the album isn’t exactly phoned-in, there’s a palpable torpidity present that’s hard to shake with repeated listens.
Nevertheless,
The Maiden does offer listeners some choice cuts. The eponymous opener is one of several callbacks to the band’s earlier work with its calculated pacing and intensifying structure that both shows Green’s late stage, aged fine-as-wine vocals as well as guitarist Steve Choi’s chameleonic chops as the song reaches a dizzying end. “Evil Sprites” sees the vocal duties transferred to Rich Balling, a welcome choice despite how powerful Green sounds due to how differently the band writes with his lower register at the helm. “Evil Sprites” in particular sees Balling employing a spoken word approach, giving space for the drums to shine and some more hard hitting riffage that will be sorely missed as the album progresses. But it’s “Lady of the Cosmos” that sees the band firing on all cylinders. Easily the most
The Ocean and the Sun song on the album, right down to the guitar tone itself, the song is busy, dense, and controlled. The brilliant riff that drives the song is the group’s best conceived since the band reintroduced themselves to the world with “Apeshit” and when it’s over it leaves listeners hungry for more. Unfortunately, it’s at this point that
The Maiden sets the guitar down and fires up the DAW.
Interestingly, for a 10 song album, all the electronic numbers lie on the 2nd half of
The Maiden, a decision that completely saps the energy from the record. TSOAF have experimented with electronic tracks since their inception to varying degrees of success but even when the songs straight up did not work, there was always a feeling of interconnectedness between them and the songs they decorated or the album at large. Other than “Chrysanthemum” which fits the album like a glove with the dreamy harmonies created by Green and Balling, the rest of the electronic tracks fit
The Maiden with cement shoes. The low point is undoubtedly the appropriately named “The Horror” in which the band jumps the shark with a wet trap beat cozying up to Balling’s indecipherable musings on fictional sleuth Nancy Drew, the end result feeling like the listener is missing out on some lore in the band’s past to explain what they just listened to.
Album closer “The Fall of Western Civilization” bears the same energy as the first half of
The Maiden but by that point, the flicker is out. Upon repeat listens, anyone other than ardent fans know that once “Lady of the Cosmos” is over, there’s little reason to stick around further. Ultimately,
The Maiden isn’t a complete flop if only because of the muscle memory of the amazing musicians behind it. But too many elements of the album feel listless and half-baked. Despite their last full-length release coming in 2008, there’s been too many recent cases of groups taking 15+ years between releases and nailing it (looking at you Deadguy) to point to this gap as the primary cause but honestly, it’s hard to hold it against the guys. After all, they probably had other things going on.
