Merzbow

Animal Liberation - Until Every Cage Is Empty is a 2022 studio album by Merzbow, released on CD by the British label Cold Spring. Masami Akita has campaigned for animal rights and veganism for many years. Here he turns that conviction into five tracks and 49 minutes of dense, furious noise. It is one of the most openly political records in his large catalogue, and reviewers counted it among his most focused albums of recent years.

All the music is by Masami Akita. The four parts of No Cages were recorded and mixed at Munemihouse, his studio in Tokyo, in 2022, while the closing Baby Bird dates from 2021. Martin Bowes mastered the album at The Cage Studios and Abby Helasdottir designed the sleeve. Cold Spring presents the black and white artwork as a nod to the animal rights and anarcho-punk movements of the 1980s. A caged battery hen and stencilled lettering fill the front, confined farm animals the inside. In a 2021 statement printed by the label, Akita linked the pandemic to wet markets and poultry farming. He closed with the words "Veganism is the future for humanity". Proceeds were pledged to animal rights charities.

The suite No Cages takes up more than forty minutes. Its first part opens on a heavy, murky low end, soon torn apart by whining tones, shrieks and clattering junk sounds. Pitch bends run through it that come close to cries. The third part stacks rolling percussion, processed guitar and synth over sharp feedback, and at moments the squeals recall caged poultry. Baby Bird starts as a looping metallic churn of cut-up fragments. It then breaks down into glitchy electronic tones and slow, deep swells over a scrap of sped-up muzak.

In Musique Machine Roger Batty called it "one of the more consistent and wholly rewarding releases to appear from the king of noise in some years". Spectrum Culture pointed to the "harrowing combination of caustic noise and its sobering subject matter". Its reviewer added that the record works on the listener's feelings about caged animals as much as on the ears. The album is one of many Merzbow titles on Cold Spring. The label also keeps in print his collaboration with Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, A Perfect Pain.

This edition is a single CD in a matt-laminated digipak, Cold Spring catalogue number CSR314CD, released in May 2022.