Creepy Black Walk on the Land

Not to be an elitist dick on purpose, but anyone that likes this doesn’t even know why they like it and should thus be exterminate. For black metal, there’s a bunch of good in a sea of bad, as is with every other music genre; with black metal though, it’s serious business. Technology today allows anyone to pick up and instrument, record something, and put it all over the net so that someone anywhere (with internet access) in the world can hear it. This is how leeching creep bands like Animae Capronii are spawned and survive.

This is essentially Zarach Baal Tharagh’s prodigy, except more bedroom style instead of basement style. None of these songs have any redeeming value and they are obstructed greatly by the rehearsal-style production. Rehearsals aren’t meant to be fucking produced for a full-length, and with this one we get the added pleasure of fuzz and overwrought distortion that’ll get Darkthrone pissed off. The guitars just surge and grind without any true rhythm or riff to compliment any song. The guitars separate the vocals and the drumming completely apart, so there isn’t any unity in the playing.

Like many black metal bands, Animae Capronii goes all out for atmosphere, not riffs. Cesare hopes that after everything is thrown into the garbage recording, it’ll come out into an ear-splitting, spacey, dreamy collage of black metal proportions. That’s the key with this album – this spacey overtone with the guitars and the synths, which is overdone as fuck. It’s nice for some bands who know what the hell they’re doing, but with this band it’s gimmicky, childish, out of place, and highly irritating. Songs like “Remembering” open up with the worst of it with some kid’s Casio’s keyboard playing a tune that’s supposed to be melodic, but sounds like some cartoon show Halloween jingle.

I’ll admit that the spacey guitars are pretty nice and psychotic, but nothing else works as it should on this album. The production eats away at anything creative and the whole unity issue has already been maxed out to the point where this album has become too disjointed and tiring to stay tuned. Cesare does screams and vocals that by this point just sort of pass as stereotypical, Darkthrone imitated vocals. The worst though are his cleans, which aren’t in key with the music and are awkward with that accent of his. Nothing is used to enhance them, so you get the lovely sound of literally unproduced clear vocals that could sound like any teenager trying to pull off an alternative rock song.

The ambiance crosses between early Mortiis and some other spacey shit, but Cesare ruins it by playing it non-stop through every song. You never get a break, and at the core they really aren’t bad ideas – Cesare’s execution just sucks shit. Overall Animae Capronii has decent goals, but this guy sticks with shitty production and lackluster songwriting to achieve what he wants as soon as he wants without building up the skill. Take the drums for instance – you’d expect some sweet rhythms and maybe some blast beats or anything worth your time, but instead they’re just regular, inoffensive pop-rock drumming. Not only does the kit sound clunky and mechanical, but it’s buried on some songs and too loud on others; the playing also goes from metronome-easy to sloppy as shit.

Just… god damnit… just stay away from this. All of these full-lengths look tempting at first but every second you spend getting to know more about this band, you get this feeling in your gut that you should just run away as fast as you can. That’s a human instinct, and it’s trying to save your ass from torture. Most of these album titles should be an indicator as to how half-assed all these albums are, and if you weren’t convinced by that then the cover arts and song-titles should fix you right up. While good ideas are present, Cesare doesn’t know diddly-dick about how to translate it into reality, and that’s the problem with this band.