Band:	Animations
Album:	Reset Your Soul
Style:	Progressive metal
Release date:	July 2009

01. Reset Your Soul
02. Demons Of War
03. Inscrutable
04. The Manhattan Project
05. Request For Redemption
06. The Last Man
07. 1989
08. Toxicyber

Although traditionally viewed as a country rich primarily in death metal, Poland has in recent years estabilished itself as wealthy also in progressive metal of all kinds. Riverside might be the best known such band; however, there are many more fish in this particular pond and the hungry fisherman will definitely catch something that they like. Fans of Dream Theater and Redemption should for example check out Animations and their sophomore disc Reset Your Soul.

Instrumental sections that show off the musicians' talents for no reason do appear here; however, they are not quite as annoying as you might imagine since they tend to mesh with the fast-paced compositions pretty well. With this said, if you fucking hate wankery in music as much as I do, you will have a pretty hard time listening to Reset Your Soul with a straight face. Who the hell cares how nimble some musician's fingers are? Obnoxiously showing that shit off really doesn't impress me or move me in any way, except perhaps to vomit. I want music to somehow inspire me intellectually or stir me emotionally and even a grind band with no conventional intelligence to speak of can do that. It makes no difference to me how many hours musicians spend a day tenderly stroking their... strings. Fancy solos don't suddenly make a shit song smell of roses. Luckily, Animations do manage to sneak some catchy and non-trivial memories into the mix, with a fair amount of emotion being present in the vocals. The best examples of this are "Inscrutable" and "Toxicyber" - both memorable and thoroughly enjoyable songs. The instrumental "The Manhattan Project" is also quite well done. Unfortunately, we also get some sappy bullshit in the form of "Request For Redemtion" and most of the other songs just go on and on for far too long for their own good.

With all this said, Reset Your Soul is not really that bad an album. Sure, Animations clearly take their inspirations very seriously; however, their music is not really a proper rip-off. Instead, this is an above-average prog-metal album with a few songs that show a lot of promise, while the rest are still digestable.