Fast Animals and Slow Kids
Hybris

A reassuring and mellifluous acoustic guitar accompanied by an organ motif opens “Un pasto al giorno” before a thunderous sonic explosion arrives...

It seems like the dawn of a new post-rock album, yet they are Italian, they don’t play post-rock, and they're called Fast Animals And Slow Kids (the moniker is inspired by The Griffins) and come from Perugia.

The project began in 2007 from the meeting of four very young guys, Aimone, Alessandro, Alessio, and Jacopo, who after a first EP “Questo è un cioccolattino” debuted on a long scale in 2011 under the protective wing of Appino and Giulio Favero (Il Teatro Degli Orrori) with “Cavalli” for Iceforeveryone owned by Zen Circus.
With “Hybris” (for the meaning, explanation, and Greek lesson, I refer you elsewhere) the band decided to cut the umbilical cord from their guiding figures and go it alone, recording everything in Aimone’s family vacation home with some help from Andrea Marmorini, guitarist of La Quiete, and releasing the album through Woodworm records.

What does “Hybris” sound like? Their recipe could be described extravagantly and brutally as progressiverockpostpunkmelodic.
I find it inappropriate the comparisons made by some with Fine Before You Came with whom they really have nothing in common except the fact that “Hybris” was also made available in free download, and if not nonsensical, a bit misleading are those with Ministri, who the Perugian band supported on some dates during their tour since the latter are much more canonical and attached to a more classic rock formula. And then, if we really need to bring up the name of an Italian band, let's say Gazebo Penguins.

Here instead, there are strong doses of genuine melodic punk rock, but there are also many large guitars, violins, trumpets, organs, which seems like a jubilant orgy despite the lyrics very much in line with the times and not so happy a reflection of our generation, daughters of instability, doubts, and questions, and few certainties: “the hopes at twenty years old being still but feeling distant the hopes at twenty years old I say: they close your eyes but you think of sunsets” (“Farse”).

I believe I haven’t easily heard so many stop & go and scenario changes within the individual songs, which often have a unique progression and are not very inclined to form.

An album felt written with the exuberance and freshness of twenty-year-olds for twenty-year-olds and not just them, seemingly simple and catchy but that at times shows a class and ideas to envy.

Three titles? “Un pasto al giorno” - “A cosa ci serve” (the anthem) - “Troia” (the final crescendo sing-along worthy of applause).