Miasma ermetico

No bullshitting when I say this – I don’t like anything about this album. The only thing I can picture with Animae Capronii is Cesare Sannino in some bedroom with a toy keyboard and a beginner’s guitar playing black metal like it was the shit. He must've been thinking if Fenriz heard it he’d so ask Cesare to join Darkthrone. With almost an entire CD length of material devoted to fifth rate second wave black metal worship, this is the longest album I’ve heard by this guy (and it’s the worst).

The rehearsal quality production is absolutely abysmal: no instruments sound together, no unity is reached, no compromises are agreed upon, and my ears continue to suffer waves of abuse. My ears actually tremble as I sit and listen to this album. This happens with any album by Animae Capronii but this one goes way, way too far. The production on this is incomprehensible and no one who has an atom’s worth of passion in their heart would release something that sounds like this. This outdoes every MySpace bedroom recording: gurgle grind, deathcore, cyberspeed noise, pig squeal adult contemporary, etc. - you name it.

All of these tracks are too drawn out for their own formula. This is an issue with every song by this guy. However, other tracks are manageable, although the mindset of this rehearsal means there’s no stopping what’s being played. Cesare just goes on and on with cheaply distorted sloppy guitar riffs from a Fender amp. Let me put it to you this way; imagine that I bought a beginner guitar set and a recording device from Guitar Center. Say I wanted to play rip-off Darkthrone songs without atmosphere or emotion and I wanted to do it today – what would I need to do? I’d need to learn how to pretty much play the guitar and get all the other instruments recorded too, right? Learning properly to improve my playing skills takes too long so fuck that shit I'll just record whatever I play.

Well that’s what the fuck is going on with this music. The raw, thin distortion with no production or bass guitar back up is being played by an amateur looking at tabs online and trying to remember that cool power chord he thought about two minutes ago. Nothing is remotely intricate, thought-out, or executed in anyway that’d make it enjoyable. The tone of the guitars is one big fuzz of distortion and feedback grating the walls like nails on a chalkboard – a whole new level of raw. I’ve heard no bass support whatsoever and that’s not me just trying to pass judgment and skip the album. I don't even think there was a bass guitar present during these sessions. There is a low, grubby tone that sounds like a cello that’s probably the keys, so make of that what you will.

There are four things usually going on at once: vocals, drumming, guitars, and that cello thing… none of them are together. The drumming consists of metronome synced beats of the snare. I’m pretty sure there are cymbals and double bass kicks going on but either they didn’t get picked up by the recorder properly or the fuzzball of guitar distortion ate them up. With that fuzzball, hardly any riffs can be distinguished from one another, which means you only have the vocals and keys left. The vocals are screams that any MySpace clone can try out – no purpose, no drive, no refinement, and no mutilation from the throat as one would hope. The keys, too, are just sappy, economical shit that has no purpose, doesn’t fit, and has no tunes for anyone appreciate. Some moments have the keys trying to bring some atmosphere in the mix, but that’s impossible with this production.

Cesare had a bunch of ideas going on, as the album and song lengths show. However, with production and playing this bad, it’s completely impractical. Not once did I enjoy anything from this album. I feel like I’m listening to some teenager's rehearsal. Well Cesare, this is the ultimate epitome of raw black metal – raw in skills, raw in production, and raw in quality. Scratch that last one actually since that would indicate at least some quality.