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Animals As Leaders Release New Music Video, Reissue ‘Encore Edition’ of Debut Album

After a period of relative quiet, DC-based progressive metal trio Animals as Leaders have come out swinging with both a newly released music video for “Physical Education” — their first video

9 years ago

AAL_Video


After a period of relative quiet, DC-based progressive metal trio Animals as Leaders have come out swinging with both a newly released music video for “Physical Education” — their first video actually featuring the band members after nearly five years — and a brand new edition of their 2010 debut album. More after the jump!

It came as a bit of a surprise, to say the least, when the band teased a new music video featuring the members themselves on their Facebook page, considering that the last few AAL videos have consisted entirely of odd animated shapes sort of dancing about to the music. The odd one out remains the video for “CAFO”, in which guitarists Tosin Abasi and Javier Reyes are mostly seen bobbing their heads whilst shredding away on not-custom guitars as strange lights flare in the background. (2010 was a simpler time.)

As one of the more popular songs from last year’s The Joy of Motion, “Physical Education” is a solid choice for a new video, though as it turns out the video’s subject matter stays a lot truer to the title than one may have imagined. While the song’s catchy and near-constant thumping groove coupled with the title may have initially conjured mental images of repeated physical work on first listen, the video has Tosin and co. comprising the staff of ‘Animals as Leaders Middle School’, and has a plot literally featuring both PE classes and teenage angst as expressed through violence unto one’s peers. What follows is probably about what you’d expect, though with a djent joke or two shoehorned somewhere in between.

In addition, the band have also announced a CD reissue of their 2010 debut album under the ‘Encore Edition’ moniker, to be released on July 10 this year and currently available for pre-order on Bandcamp. The Encore Edition boasts a more complete and prettier version of the original album art along with two extra tracks; one previously unreleased, and the other a demo for a song of theirs I have never heard of. I wonder why only one of those is marked with ‘previously unreleased’ — perhaps we’ll hear snippets of what later became another song? It would be interesting to actually see some insight into the trio’s songwriting process, however small.

Lastly, I’d like to mention that I’m sure glad nearly everyone at my high school was equally terrible at dodgeball.

-AH

Ahmed Hasan

Published 9 years ago