Animals (Pink Floyd Album) - Release

Release

Professional ratings
Review scores
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Allmusic
Robert Christgau B+
Pitchfork Media 10.0/10
Rolling Stone unfavourable

Animals was a slog. It wasn't a fun record to make, but this was when Roger really started to believe that he was the sole writer for the band. He believed that it was only because of him that the band was still going, and obviously, when he started to develop his ego trips, the person he would have his conflicts with would be me.

“ ” –Richard Wright

Animals was released in the UK on 23 January 1977, and in the US on 12 February. It reached number two in the UK charts, and number three in the US charts. The album's release followed Capital Radio's broadcast two days earlier of The Pink Floyd Story, and an evening press conference held at the power station two days before that. The broadcast was originally to have been an exclusive for the London-based station—who since mid-December had been broadcasting The Pink Floyd Story—but a copy was given to John Peel, who played side one of the album in its entirety a day earlier. NME called the album "… one of the most extreme, relentless, harrowing and downright iconoclastic hunks of music to have been made available this side of the sun …", and Melody Maker's Karl Dallas wrote "… uncomfortable taste of reality in a medium that has become in recent years, increasingly soporific …" Rolling Stone's Frank Rose was despondent, writing "The 1977 Floyd has turned bitter and morose. They complain about the duplicity of human behavior (and then title their songs after animals—get it?). They sound like they've just discovered this—their message has become pointless and tedious."

In his 2004 autobiography Inside Out, Nick Mason suggests that the album's perceived harshness, when compared to previous Floyd releases, may be a result of a "workman-like mood in the studio", and a subconscious reaction to the accusations from the afore-mentioned punk genre that bands like Pink Floyd represented "dinosaur rock". Animals was certified by the RIAA as 4X Platinum on 31 January 1995.

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