The Anime Album

Front Cover

For the tour that supported The Anime Album, check out ***The Messiah Tour***.

***The Anime Album***is the fifth studio album by the British-American band The Infection. It was released on April 19th, 2005 by Reprise Records; just months before the band's hiatus in October. It was recorded at Abbey Road Studios in London, England and produced by Steve Albini.

Following the disappointing sales of their previous album, the band decided to reset themselves and underwent an "image change", wearing white and black uniforms onstage, to add more theatrical presence to the album. The album also marked the return to the Gothic Rock sound for the first time since the release of Shadows Descending.

Upon release, it became one of the most anticipated releases of 2005 with it marking a career comeback for The Infection and selling over 16 million copies worldwide, making it the third best-selling album for the band. This would be the group's last album for 12 years, until their return with 2017's Piece Of The Action which would been the last album with the original lineup.

## Development

*Main article: Development of The Anime Album*

The Infection became extremely popular in the 1990s, after releasing several albums such as Shadows Descending, Traffic Jam and Disparate Realms. After the poor sales of the self-titled album in January 2002, it was first reported by MTV News that the band began to work on their fifth album in April.

## Tracklist

1. Inspire The Uninspired
2. Defying Gravity
3. Superfly
4. Footprint
5. Eye In My Hand
6. Candy-Cane
7. Way of Dead Souls
8. Dead Moon Circus
9. London's Burning
10. Galactica
11. Princess Sally
12. Destiny's Child\*
13. Black Hole of America
14. Natural One
15. Saiyans
16. Langauge Reveals Thinking

NOTE: The song "Destiny's Child" is completely unrelated to the 1990's girl group with the same name, and that the band stated that they didn't steal the name during a April 2005 interview.

## 15th Anniversary edition

The 15th anniversary edition includes the original album (in CD and vinyl) on disc one and was released on April 19th, 2020.

All tracks are written by The Infection.

#### Disc 2 - B-Sides, Demos and Rarities

1. Animal (B-Side)
2. Birthday (It's The Best I've Ever Had) (B-Side)
3. As Is It (2002 demo)
4. Original Source (2002 demo)
5. Drone (2002 demo)
6. Second Rate (2003 demo)
7. Ketchum's Progress (2003 demo)
8. You Didn't Need (B-Side)
9. Suck (2002 demo)
10. Kick It (2002 demo)
11. Dead Moon Circus (recorded live at BBC1)
12. Black Hole of America (recorded live at BBC1)

#### Disc 3 - Covers

1. 1,000 Hours (Green Day cover)
2. Last Call (Elliott Smith cover)
3. Stoned (Smash Mouth cover)
4. Moonlight Densetsu (DALI cover)
5. Pokémon Theme (Jason Paige cover)
6. Rhapsody of Youth (Sambomaster cover)
7. Hey Bulldog (Beatles cover)
8. Sympathy for the Devil (Rolling Stones cover)
9. Hotel California (Eagles cover)
10. Beds Are Burning (Midnight Oil cover)
11. Cha-La Head-Cha-La (Hironobu Kageyama cover)

#### Disc 4 - Sandy's Demos and Rarities

1. Better For Me (2002 demo)
2. The Insane Logical Maniacs (2002 demo)
3. Hearts and Minds (2003 demo)
4. Devil Monkey (2002 demo)
5. Oh Nina (2003 demo)
6. Maker-Destruction (2003 demo)
7. Birthday (It's The Best I've Ever Had) (2002 demo)
8. Run Away (2003 demo)
9. Dear One (2003 demo)
10. The Cocaine Song (2002 demo)
11. A Teenager from the Gothic World of Oz (2003 demo)
12. Queen Nehelenia Is A Dick, And Ya Know It (2003 demo)
13. Kakyuu's Love Machine (2003 demo)
14. Everyday It's Gonna Rain (2002 demo)

### Notes:

* Defying Gravity was originally apart of Day Of Wine and Roses, which was a unfinished album scheduled for a Fall 1999 date.
* Footprint was a song written by Fred Durst and was originally going to be on the band's 2002 self-titled album until the blog post incident that caused Durst to be fired.
* Langauge Reveals Thinking was apart of the band's early project Wince and was included in The High School Tour.
* London's Burning was written around 1986, and was included in Wince's 1st album An Old Friend.

### Singles:

* Dead Moon Circus (Released - April 19th, 2005)
* Black Hole of America (Released - July 4th, 2005)
* London's Burning (Released - September 18th, 2005)

## Recording

The recording of the album was mostly made possible by the anime community, which requested the band many times via online forums and petitions to do an album about anime.

Regarding its lyrical content, it has been referred to as a concept album chronicling Sailor Moon**,**teenage relationships, and darker territory, touching upon the realities of adulthood and unexpected hardships. In addition, its recording process was long and ended in February 2005 just two months before the album's release.

The recording process for the fifth studio album began around early December of 2002, and was originally going to be a sequel to Disparate Realms. The original idea for the fifth album was to be an all-direct "part two" of the album with several songs recorded; but the album was shelved in 2003.

## Personnel

### The Infection

* SpongeBob SquarePants - lead guitar, lead vocals
* Sandy Cheeks - bass guitar, vocals, synth-bass, production, engineering
* Patrick Star - drums, percussion, programming
* Yolandi Visser - rhythm guitar, backing vocals
* Anna Lake - keyboards, synthesizers, and other original pieces of 16-bit audio information

### Technical personnel

* Steve Albini - producer, mixing, production, additional engineering, programming, digital audio editing
* Jonathan Davis – additional vocals on "Dead Moon Circus"
* Brian Virtue – assistant engineer
* George Martin - mastering
* Tim Stedman – art direction, design
* Cope Till – assistant engineer
* Doug Trantow – assistant engineer