After Siouxsie and the Banshees vanished with a whisper in 1995 after almost twenty years of bucking the system and producing music that was above and beyond the stigmatic tag of goth, Siouxsie and her husband, Banshee drummer Budgie, return with their ongoing alter-ego The Creatures. It�s been ten years since we heard last from The Creatures on the Boomerang album, but Siouxsie and Budgie still have plenty of pent-up anger and emotion to convey with just very animalistic percussion and electronics. Siouxsie�s voice is both a blessing and a curse. She is and always will be the ice queen, but her style will inevitably draw comparisons to her work with the Banshees.

Anima Animus was a difficult record for The Creatures to get out. Lots of label troubles prolonged the process until Siouxsie got fed up and decided to take matters into her own hands. She and Budgie started their own label, Sioux Records, and they run and operate the label themselves along with a fully functioning website that sells records and other merchandise. The band warmed up new material last summer going on a small club tour with John Cale in tow, who had in part produced the last Banshees album, The Rapture. The resulting sound is very much reminiscent of The Creature�s early recordings in 1983 on the Hawaiian-flavored Feast. Budgie�s tribal drumming is ever present, so not too much has changed in fifteen or so years.

The only obvious new element is the band�s foray into the electronic world, which is an area they only dabbled with as Siouxsie and the Banshees. The electronics are not so prominent that anyone would accuse them of bandwagoning, but the synthetics do factor in considerably with the new sound as on the cold, bleating pulse of 2nd Floor. Siouxsie hasn�t sounded this angry in years, and on Exterminating Angel she�s clearly pissed off: poor little rich thing/poor little bleeding heart/poor little misunderstood/piss on it I�m sick of it/enough is enough/I want to fuck it up. Anima Animus simultaneously thrusts you forward while making you feel nostalgic for vintage Siouxsie and the Banshees.