THE FORMATION YEARS
Back in 2009, four young women, hailing from the Italian city of Rome, formed Winter Severity Index [WSI] although it can accurately be said that the band was more like the solo project of its strong driving force, a highly talented artist named Simona Ferrucci.
WSI would soon find a different dynamic after the initial quartet morphed into a duo on the aftermath of the release of their self-titled debut EP. The newly formed duo would be comprised of Simona and Valentina Fanigliulo and they would then produce WSI second EP titled "Survival Rate".
If in most bands each release appears to be apparently unrelated to the previous ones, the creative process evolving at random most of the times and without proper “ideological” content or coherence, such a scenario appears to be rather unthinkable with WSI. This “ice cold ice” Roman duo gives the impression of rigorous planning and therefore the excision of all the undesired flaws from everything they create.
Their self-titled debut EP clearly showed the chosen path. The Cold-Wave aesthetic has always been there and it got far denser on "Survival Rate" though still not yet completely purified. The first two EP's released between 2010 and 2013, catalyzed the maturity of a nonstop growth process that would further on clear the way for the making of WSI debut full-length.
"SLANTING RAY"
The production of their debut album coincided with another line-up adjustment after the departure of Valentina Fanigliulo and the arriving of former Bohémien member, Alessandra Romeo, to take on synths and keyboards. The album would finally come to daylight in April 2014.
“Slanting Ray” stands as a rare masterpiece. An album condemned to timelessness. Simona and Alessandra might have eventually acknowledged this by the time they have decided to work on its follow-up. The second album would never be a piece of cake. The quality standard had been set too high with “Slanting Ray” and surpassing it would supposedly be a definite creative challenge.
"HUMAN TAXONOMY"
WSI sophomore album was consciously composed and recorded. A thoughtful release where everything was put into place. “Human Taxonomy” is obsessive, obscure, oppressive, claustrophobic. The narrative of a solipsistic exercise on anxiety, on the malaises of contemporary decadence and alienation of the human individual.
“Human Taxonomy” is the sonic scape WSI seem to have always aimed at and have effortlessly built through their previous releases. A carefully dilapidated diamond. One of the things that were probably taken into account concerning this dilapidation process was a certain "metaphysical" question of time, directly related to the darkness and density that would settle in this second album like a veil of doom and gloom.
“Human Taxonomy” is 3 songs and 22.02 minutes shorter than "Slanting Ray". We'll never know if it would resist or fail the time length proof, but It would probably pass with distinction in spite the fact that it is an austere album. A dark poem composed in seven verses (songs/instrumental themes), under the influence of a martial, minimalist, almost geometrical, aesthetics.
"Human Taxonomy" is full of glamorous addictive, hypnotic, basslines that creatively emulate the rhythmic patterns that pay tribute to Peter Hook or Simon Gallup. The album is obviously not only made of such vicious basslines, but also of pounding, steady, incisive cold drumming and beautifully designed synth patterns perfumed with Simona´s vocals giving a much greater post human tension to each song.
THE INFLUENCES
Here one can perceive that the cold wave aesthetic was always present mingled with clear influences from Joy Division and the infused influence of The Cure trilogy: “17 Seconds”, “Faith” and “Pornography”. mixed with some Gang of Four and remnants of the New Wave era. On "Survival Rate", their second EP, the cold wave aesthetic was steadily unfolded though still not yet depurated. By then the band was thriving to emerge amidst evident influences of U2’s guitar groove reminding the urban grime and nostalgia of the "October" album.
“Human Taxonomy” is the sonic scape WSI seem to have always aimed at and have effortlessly built through their previous releases, though “Slanting Ray”, either intentional or unintentionally allows the attentive listener to spot influences of Sad Lovers and Giants and Lowlife, early Psychedelic Furs, The Au Pairs, The Chameleons, The Sound, Marquis de Sade, Kraftwerk, KaS Product, Nitzer Ebb, Pink Turns Blue, The Frozen Autumn, but above all from Asylum Party.
WSI artistic choices seem quite indebted towards the French cold/minimal wave from the early 80’s, which is only natural taking into account its seminal importance in the European music scene and the seeds it sowed on many contemporary bands. The idiosyncrasies of both band members with the additional surplus of an effervescent effortless dynamics, enabled Winter Severity Index to build an ever growing solid status that undoubtedly ranks them as one of the most creative, consistent and fascinating European Cold-Wave bands. The musical world must definitely know and enjoy them.
HUMAN TAXONOMY SONG BY SONG
PARAPHILLIA
This dense instrumental opening track literally sets the tone for the fantastic, well crafted, dark poetry that lingers throughout the album. This initial thrack is quite rich from an imagetic perspective. It enables the listener to associate certain desires or deviations to specific parts of the song or to certain sonic images and effects. This initial track with its omnipresent claustrophobic oppression and cinematic atmosphere could perfectly describe the disturbing deviousness of a sexual predator stalking its prey. The album could not have a better opening.
ATHLETE
This song is a rare case of perfect affinity between the sonic devastation it releases and its title. Something that is quite hard to do for most bands, but not for Winter Severity Index which have an aesthetic concept of making music where nothing comes accidentally. this viciously addictive song creates a strong as well as an impressive notion of desperate run in the wilderness of modern human deception and deceit, a marathon of desperation through luring shadows, permanently seeking for a way out of the reality of fake fragile futile idols and the very essence of the struggle to survive in the lonesome human environment. Endlessly running. There is an obsessive rhythmic tension pervading WSI songs that announce the kind of anxiety proper to a recurrent alert state of mind. You have to be a true athlete to win that crucial battle looking ahead while looking over the shoulder.
A QUIET LIFE
The third song from the album cuts like a knife in the darkness and it cuts randomly, stroke after stroke in the impassioned, but defiant self awareness of a mechanistic fate serving its own repetitive and delusive pattern that pushes the individual towards some wilder zone where its the original dignity is suppressed.
WAITING ROOM
The Waiting Room portrays life as a painful longing for some yet unknown meaning, though intuition stubbornly points the way to cross the shadowy line where spectres seem gigantic entities devoid of substance, like empty buildings where ghosts run banquets over the recurrent anger of a fragile destination though the finishing line is just around the corner you cannot reach it. The Waiting Room is the gap between the spectral, automotive, life where everything works superficially on alienated mode and the permanent desire to cross the border for some greater living within life itself. The endless longing.
BACKSTROKE
Backstroke opens with a highly Cures-que bassline and a rhythmic section that vividly reminds "Play for Today". In fact, this particular song texture lies upon that mesmerizing bassline. Once again the lyrical subject revolves the existentialist dilemma of loss and failure, anxiety and fear, the void facing and swallowing us. A fatal attraction tempting individual fragilities. Backstroke is the struggle of a fractured individual not like the "should I stay or should I go" query, but more like the hesitation and doubt of where, when, why and how to start again and for so many times as our inner will allows it. A narrative of the human condition.
DRUMS OF AFFLICTION
"Drums of Affliction" stands out as the second instrumental theme of the album. If "Paraphilia" opened the oppressive chamber of human discomfort, this track highlights the idea that was already stated on the previous songs which refers to the human struggling in the cold, insensitive wilderness under the format of a hypnotic never ending dancing cycle of self-abandon where the gut wrenching dilemmas of fractured existence force to a restless, uneasy, unstoppable dancing.
5 AM
The closing track of the album is the perfect soundscape for a tormented insomniac state of mind, though it could work brilliantly on a film score. It would seem quite anachronistic if this beautifully “ice cold ice” poetic taxonomy of the “human inhumaneness” did not have its epilogue with a song that appears to be a kind of post humanity, death march plenty with sonic details emphasizing an omnipresent urban desert where individuals inflict restraining orders upon themselves to keep the mechanistic serialized world away, living in a socially aseptic confinement, slowly decaying at the pace of the silent killing of emotions exposing a certain slow moral decay.
INDIEVOTION RATING FOR “HUMAN TAXONOMY”: 8.5/10