Moby Goes Punk Rock

If you're still angry over a recent break-up, this is a good album for you.

Animal Rights is a big departure from other Moby releases, such as Play and Songs. In many of the songs, Moby plays an electric guitar instead of a synthesizer and yells a lot about the people in his life who have done him wrong. Many of the songs have a punk rock feel. They are angry and adrenaline-filled. There are several tracks that consist of the trademark slow, synthesizer sounds, but you won’t find any dance tracks on Animal Rights.

The overall feeling I get from this album is that Moby has just had his heart broken by someone he was very much in love with. The songs are filled with feelings of betrayal, angst, sadness and regret. It’s a good album to listen to if you’ve just been dumped. The album is over an hour long, consisting of sixteen tracks.

While the majority of the songs on this album are upbeat and guitar-driven, Moby still threw in some melancholy songs, such as Anima that consist of synthesizers and computer effects. I don’t think the angry, punk rock style meshes very well with the sad, electronic style. I wish Moby would’ve stuck with just one style. Since most of Moby’s other albums are filled with the more hypnotic, electronic songs, I think it would’ve been nice if on this album he used only the organic, guitar sound. Oh well.

One of my favorite songs on this album is Track 6, Come On Baby. A really cool guitar riff plays throughout the song while Moby sings (actually yells) the lyrics. He begins with “Love was a one-time thing.” The song builds up to the chorus, when Moby unleashes his anger. I can’t really understand what he’s yelling in the chorus, but I can tell he’s angry. This is a great song to rock out to. The guitar riff reminds me of James Iha from Smashing Pumpkins for some reason. It’s a really catchy song.

My other favorite song on Animal Rights is Track 10, That’s When I Reach for My Revolver. This is the only song in which I can understand almost all the words. It begins kind of slow with Moby singing, “Once I had my heros, once I had my dreams. All of that has changed now, the truth begins again. The truth is not the comfortable, no.” Again the song builds up to the chorus, which gets faster and louder and Moby sings, “That’s when I reach for my revolver. That’s when it all gets blown away.” In this song Moby sings about all the tension that has been building in his life. When the pressure gets to be too much, he just blows it all away. This is a great song to sing along to in your car.

Moby is a social activist. In the Animal Rights CD booklet, he writes about his views on topics varying from Christianity to the environment. In the liner notes he thanks Jesus Christ and says, “please listen to animal rights in its entirety at least once.” Obviously, he wants the album to be taken in as a collective whole, instead of judged by each individual song.

Though I wish Moby would’ve left off the slow, melancholy songs, overall I think this is a great album. A couple of the songs can be found on other albums, such as Now I Let it Go and Living, but most of the songs are unique to Animal Rights. It's a nice change of pace for Moby fans, and the songs will appeal to any fan of rock music.

1. Dead Sun
2. Someone to Love
3. Heavy Flow
4. You
5. Now I Let It Go
6. Come On Baby
7. Soft
8. Anima
9. Say It’s All Mine
10. That’s When I Reach For My Revolver
11. Alone
12. Face It
13. Old
14. Living
15. Love Song For My Mom
16. A Season In Hell

This album was produced by Moby. He also wrote almost all the songs. Animal Rights was released in 1997.