CD Review: WHITECHAPEL - The Somatic Defilement
Posted by Cosmo Lee on October 29th, 2007
Only in the Internet age could bands so far away sound so alike. Compare All Shall Perish's (Bay Area) first album with Alienacja (Poland), Despised Icon (Montreal), and Whitechapel (Knoxville, TN), and you won't hear much difference. They're all textbook "deathcore," fusing death metal and hardcore punk. Death growls, pig squeal "brees," piledriver breakdowns, and occasional Gothenburg death metal are all de rigueur, as well as the ubiquitous Job for a Cowboy font. Did someone call a meeting and decide this was Hot Topic's priority for 2007?
It's not a good sign when a metal record's most unique moment comes from keyboards (the title track's epic outro). Otherwise, everything here came from somewhere else. The half-speed intro to "Devirgination Studies" is pure Dying Fetus. The Swedish melodies in "Fairy Fay" came from The Black Dahlia Murder (who took them from, uh, Sweden). Those midrange yells alternating with low death growls? Leo Miller from Animosity got there first. In fact, Whitechapel sound a lot like Animosity. Maybe when Metal Blade signed Whitechapel recently, they forgot they already had Animosity on their roster.
This is all unfortunate, as the execution here is excellent. On only their debut, Whitechapel demonstrate impressive instrumental proficiency. They shift gears smoothly, turning slowly-galloping riffs into crushing breakdowns, as in "Fairy Fay" and "Prostatic Fluid Asphyxiation." A brief bit of thrash even surfaces in the title track. This band knows what it's doing. Sadly, what it's doing is being other bands.
5.5/10
Whitechapel on MySpace
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so to start off, I have been apart of the knox scene for a very long time … I know the band personally and know that they are all great guys with a great understand of metal and where it is headed….. So I would like to say your assumptions are probably the stupidest fucking things I have ever read… what the fuck kinda site are you trying to run .. a I dont know shit about butt fuckin anything site so Im just gonna talk out my ass site… really man I mean youve gotta be like mentally handicapped to even make the suggestions you just made… have you ever heard of a little thing called progression… yeah thats what its fuckin called you peice of shit …. in a sense your trying to say that whitechapel the overwhelmingly most brutal band to be around isnt good because they didnt invent music…. your one stupid cock sucker… I mean really man .. more people will probably remember one whitechapel breakdown then everyone that remembers your worthless bullshit life when your poor ole retard sack has passed on to the great I dont know shit about anything land… ….
P.S. SUCK A DICK SHIT BITCH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
dude they just suck they sound like any other deathcore band so your the one that should go suck dick
Thats because they are a Deathcore band, ya cunt.
Whitechapel has improved upon every aspect of Deathcore. And where does a comparison to Despised Icon fall here? The 2 bear no resemblance at all, aside from the fact that both use breakdowns.
The progression of Deathcore has ended up in what we have as Whitechapel. The most brutal fucking band I've heard in my life. And there's no band you can say is more brutal than them. Animosity's got nothing on this band. This is the new wave of death metal, and you better fucking get used to it. It really says something about the band if theyve been together for not even 2 years, toured the whole fucking US and Canada, headlined a festival in Europe on an indie lable, and got signed to fucking Metal Blade.
I don't understand why it's such a negative thing to be able to show your influences. I mean fuck, you can't tell me bands like Deicide and Circle of Dead Children don't show who their influences are. And when it comes down to it, they're all just influenced by everything Death Metal ever was. But no one wants 30 years of Cannibal Corpse with no progression musically. I'm sure that when Death Metal was the new thing, people just ragged on it like you motherless, cunt smelling assholes are doing to Deathcore.
Whitechapel's got stay power. They've got their fans who are LOYAL as all hell, and they've got the whole southeastern part of the US that will ALWAYS have their back.
You all are just more people that need shown what the fuck this is all about.
DUUUUUUUUDE COSMO LEE IS A WEINER SUCKING PIECE OF DONKEY SHIT, AND THRASHERMARIO IS HILARY CLINTON'S DISGUSTING TWAT, FUCK YOU BOTH TO HELL! WHITECHAPEL IS LIKE THE FURY OF A THOUSAND FIERY DEMONS EATING BABIES, AND YOU GUYS ARE LIKE ELVIS PRESELY'S DEAD OLD DINGLEBERRY ASS.
SUCK A DICK SHIT DILDO BITCH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I'm gunna have to go ahead and agree that the reviewer is a fuckin retard. Whitechapel slays, end of story.
i think cosmo lee has too much semen in his ears and that probably distorted the sound of whitechapel when he was listening to it, causing him to write a terribly wrong review on it
Nice review. I've picked up this record recently and enjoyed it but it's truly a deathcore record without any thing too different from what is currently being thrown at us by Despised Icon or All Shall Perish. Solid metal all the way. And it's also nice to hear a young band being so good at understanding and playing death metal. But they're are not reinventing the wheel, no sir. Still, there is a lot of potential here and this lads might turn out a great second record after this cool one.
Whitechapel fucking owns and the new animosity cd blows by the way…
Who said anything about reinventing the wheel?
It sounds like deathcore because that's exactly what it is. And it's fucking amazing.
Say what you will, but All Shall Perish and Despised Icon have nothing on the 'Chap. Sure ASP spends a lot of time sweeping the hell out of stuff and showing what talent their guitarists have in their fingers, but Whitechapel doesn't NEED to do that. The talent is obvious with the little things Whitechapel throws in. You'll hear the occasional tech-sweep, but not enough to bore you of it.
And when it comes to breakdowns, Whitechapel knows what their doing. None of this…open palm mute till the break of dawn…shit. It takes more than that to make a good breakdown. Pauses and stops, using more than an open chord; it's all there.
When it comes down to it, Whitechapel is fucking tough as hell. It's nonstop brutality. Even the pretty harmonies have something piledriving behind it,
Hey, that last guy didn't use "your" and "you're" correctly
I like whitechapel, and suicide silence even tho they sound the same
–Dane
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