Winter Psalms

Well, what do you know? Animae Capronii have somehow continued to steadily improve. In Eternal Heaven of Silent Whispers brought the one-man project out of the shitter, but certainly wasn't very impressive by itself. The band's next album, Winter Psalms, is still pretty silly in a few places, but it seems the band is finally sitting squarely on the fence that divides good music and shit music. Hell, I'd even say Cesare's feet are dangling on the good side at this point.

Once again, almost everything's an improvement. The guitar tone is a bit less thin and fragile, the tone having been granted a bit of meat. It's now raw while still having a fair bit of background fuzz to back it up - I think it'd be safe to say that the guitar tone is up to snuff with the majority of DIY black metal projects. The songs are longer this time around, and they're a lot more varied, both in terms of the riffs within the songs and the songs within the album. Quite a few of the tracks have a major change in tempo, and some of the songs even alternate between fast and slow at times (!) in a way that actually sounds rather nice (!!!). This album is a lot more clingy to its tremolo riffs and blast beats than the previous release, which is good because that's how I like my black metal when it's not slow and crawling. (And what do you know, there are even a few crawling riffs here and there! It's like a genie is listening to my complaints and going back in time to fix them on the band's next release! Marvelous!) The tracks on Winter Psalms feel more like songs - I can feel emotions lurking in the riffs, as opposed to the last two albums I heard which were basically devoid of atmosphere.

Of course, Animae Capronii's music isn't perfect just yet. I'd personally remove the keyboard synths - I really don't think they're necessary for what the band's got going, and whenever they're used they just break the mood set by the rather decent black metal music here. The vocals here also need a bit of work. I mean, they're still the same cawing rasp they've always been (as far as I know), with a few more attempts at shrieks and growls as backing vocals than previous efforts I've heard. But I think - and I've felt this way about previous releases too - that they could stand to be a bit more vicious and hateful than they are now, and I don't think making them a bit less prevalent in the mix would hurt either. The last three tracks have some really fucking weird vocals (imagine Nattramm from Silencer, crying and wailing and all. Now imagine Nattramm being four years old and throwing a temper tantrum), and if they were an experiment, they were pretty much a failure. The riffs here are improving, but I still think Cesare can ditch the higher-pitched, Viking-ish leads until he gets a better guitar tone that makes them sound less thin and shrill; or at the very least, until he can start writing them a bit better. Finally, while I like the drum beats themselves (especially the blast beats) in their current state, I think some better samples wouldn't hurt at all - the cymbals here become less of a "chink" or a "ding" and more of a constant ringing during the blasts, and having less earrape to tolerate while trying to listen to an album is always nice.

That's basically where the flaws of Winter Psalms end, though, and I'm pretty impressed. Well, not because this is great or anything, but Animae Capronii is displaying pretty consistent improvements here. This release is over the line of quality that motivates me to listen to albums of my own accord, rather than simply reviewing them and then never caring to hear them ever again. If you're some person who's absolutely crazy about black metal and you have really low standards, you may as well check this out if you've run out of things to listen to (I can't see how that'd be possible what with the utterly tasteless amount of black metal bands in existence, but I'm sure one of you crazy assholes will prove me wrong). Everyone else might as well stay away, though.