Pink Floyd - Animals

For the cover shoot of Animals, Pink Floyd tethered a giant inflatable pig above Battersea Power Station. It broke loose and drifted into the flight paths over London before landing in a Kent field. It is the perfect image for the band's angriest, most unsettling record.

Released in 1977 and loosely inspired by George Orwell's Animal Farm, Animals divides society into three castes: the ruthless dogs, the hypocritical pigs, and the docile sheep. Roger Waters's lyrics are savage, but the music is just as sharp. The seventeen-minute "Dogs" features some of David Gilmour's most searing guitar work, "Pigs (Three Different Ones)" grinds on a talk-box riff, and "Sheep" builds from Richard Wright's electric piano into a pounding climax. Two gentle acoustic pieces, "Pigs on the Wing," frame the whole thing.

Arriving in the year of punk, Animals was Pink Floyd's leanest and most confrontational album of the decade, and it set the stage for The Wall. Many longtime fans rank it as the band's best.

This 180-gram LP is taken from the band's official remastering program, cut from the original analog masters, with the famous Battersea sleeve reproduced in full.