Randy Piper's Animal - Virus

Published September 01 2008

*=Staff's pick	Cardiac Arrest* Can't Stop Don't Wanna Die Crying Eagle* Unnatural High* Judgement Day Who's Next Zombie Shoot To Kill L.U.S.T.*

Genre	Heavy Rock	Rich Lewis	Vocals
Tracks	10	Randy Piper	Guitar
Runningtime	38 Min.	Chris Laney	Guitar
Label	Locomotive Records	Grizzly	Bass
Release	25 September 2008	J. Koleberg	Drums
Country	USA	-	Keyboard
Similar artists	W.A.S.P., Sinner

This is my first acquaintance with anything from Randy Piper's Animal ever. I have managed to miss their earlier albums as well as their live performances here in Sweden. I expected way less than this, I have to admit.

Randy Piper started out as guitarist in the now well known and renowned band W.A.S.P. but soon moved on the join Alice Cooer for a very short period of time. After that he started up the his current band Animal with former W.A.S.P. members Chris Holmes and Tony Richards. They have released two albums thus far and Virus is their third, now with a new lineup. And it is a pretty solid effort in my ears.

In the opening song I get a strong Sinner vibe, vocally as well as musically. Riffs with a good punch and a good flow and a catchy chorus. This comes again in a few more songs (Judgement Day for example) but for the rest it is of course a lot of W.A.S.P. over this, especially in the choruses. The ones in Can't Stop and L.U.S.T. are for example almost spot on. Still I think they manage to keep enough own character throughout the album and Crying Eagle and Unnatural High, which deviate the most from the formula, are among the best songs on the album.

Rich Lewis on vocals are doing a great job. Being Blackie Lawless-like when he wants to, in order to get that special W.A.S.P. feeling just enough to make it sound good but without copying anything straight off, and in other songs he switches to more cleaner and softer vocals yet with maintained pondus. In a couple of songs he sounds similar to the singer in Thunderstone and also another scandinavian band which I can't put my finger on at the moment. He is definitely the main asset of the album and the band in general.

The album loses a bit of energy toward the end, during the block consisting of Who's Next, the Cranberries cover Zombie and Shoot To Kill, but they gracefully repair that by closing with the uptempo L.U.S.T. The chorus in this one sounds suspiciously familiar, however, but hey - it sounds good.

Standard, classic, competent and catchy enough rock 'n roll which stands pretty strong in contemporary competition. Check this one out.

Performance	Originality	Production	Vocals	Songwriting
7,5	5	8	8,5	6

Summary
6,5 chalices of 10 - Tommy