polaroids of androids

Baseball don't hold back. They never have. Their live show has often been mistakenly identified as a demonstration of deranged, mental patients trialling a new experimental drug. Animal Kingdom bottles this energy as best as it can into thirty-five minutes of unsettling confusion.

The incredibly large amount of music, contrasting vocals and gut-busting chaos that Baseball throw at the listener on this record is impossible to consume in a single sitting. Their furious delivery of frantic punk rock battling against Eastern flavours is often a fantastic, chaotic mess. At other times, however, it's just a little too much to take in.

The tone of frontman Thick Passage skillfully switches between uncertainty and one of aggression that commands respect. The extra level of contrast created between his vocal work and the more gentle female touches of Evelyn Morris (Pikelet) on tracks like the Pixies-ish Mozart And The Whale and The Wedding At Susa are the finest moments of the record.

The music is built on a solid base of raw punk energy. You won't find a single track on here that runs for longer than four minutes. No epic power moves to suck the listener in. It's all quick, hard punches to multiple regions of the upper and lower body. Even when they slow the music down and decrease the voltage, such as on the ghostly Song Of The Righteous, the listener is still left feeling slightly on edge. Ultimately, it's this relentless nature of their music that is both endearing and deterring.