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First album for U.D.O. as Accept frontman Udo Dirkschneider was leaving the German metal legends. Animal House sounds a lot like mid-80s Accept and that's because it was pretty much written by members of Accept. I wonder if anyone dreamed at the time that this band would release a long string of albums and still be going 34 years later. I remember reading a review in a rock music magazine when this came out. The reviewer gave it a 4 out of 10 and, for some reason, I took that for granted. It's only a while later that I realized the guy was only into "glam metal" and gave any actual metal album a bad review. Anyway, this resulted in me getting this album many years after its release. So... Fuck that guy.

I mentioned earlier that this sounds like mid-80s Accept, so you know what that means: It's accessible, commercial-ish, catchy-as-hell metal that can charm the unsuspecting listener, but it's also hard-hitting enough to please heavy metal fans. There are no skippable tracks here. I found that even "They Want War", which kind of annoys me with the choirs and repetition, is still a track I look forward to. The title track is so catchy that it sticks after one listen. Well, I don't want to go track by track here; suffice it to say that, even though they're not all "great", each song here has at least a bit of kickass metal to offer. Udo is in top form here with his signature vocals, and as far as the music go, it's loaded with catchy guitar melodies and solos and even the drums will get you tapping your foot along. Lots of catchy choruses to be found here as well make the whole album quite memorable and, simply put, it's just a hell of a lot of fun. Fortunately, this was not the one-off that the aforementioned reviewer predicted, and the band would keep on offering more goodies for decades to come...