Review by Frost on November 18, 2021.

“Send the slut back to Hell!”

No matter how many times I hear that line, it never clicks as something that's supposed to be badass or threatening or scary. It just sounds stupid. You can't make something that simple sound anything other than over-the-top childish posturing for kids who think they're somehow mature. These words come from the second song on this album (or third if you really want to count the intro 'Necroticizing' as a track) 'Devirgination Studies'. Lines like this are scattered throughout this thing. Trust me, you won't be able to stifle laughter for long when they rear their ugly heads. Quite frankly, that's my biggest complaint with this album, so let's talk about how a fantastic concept that's so ripe for any fringe of metal to extract and stretch out into a full album tripped and fell somewhere along the way.

If you're reading this review, more than likely you're a fan of deathcore and you already know who Whitechapel are. I'm not totally familiar with the Tennessee five piece's music as I'm not the biggest fan of deathcore myself. There are a few bands I enjoy, but those bands typically have more of a traditional leaning towards death metal or other genres within their music (e.g. Carnifex, All Shall Perish, Thy Art Is Murder). I never gave their music a fair try until a few years ago when I sampled a song from their, at the time, newest record, which I think was Our Endless War. The song was one of the album singles, 'The Saw Is The Law'. Long story short, I did not like what I heard. I didn't like the try-hard tough guy lyrics, I didn't like the vocal performance, I despised the very predictable drumming, and I loathed the uninspired riffing. I was thinking to myself, “Why do these guys need three guitarists all doing the same damn thing?” If there was no variation in the guitar playing, why bother? Just have one. It's not like you're Dream Theater or any other number of progressive metal or djent bands. You're a deathcore band. Your music is nowhere near complex enough to need three guitarists.

Moving on to the concept. The concept of Whitechapel's 2007 debut is simple, but somewhat unique. This album takes place entirely from the first person POV of infamous serial killer Jack the Ripper. For those who are unaware (if you're a fan of metal, you really shouldn't be), Jack the Ripper was a man who brutally murdered and disfigured several prostitutes in the poverty stricken Whitechapel district of London. He was never caught by the police, but he did purportedly leave deliberate clues for law enforcement, in which he mocked and taunted them viciously for not being able to catch him. Now I don't know about you, but the Jack the Ripper story would undoubtedly make the perfect concept album for the right band. Was Whitechapel the band to embellish this concept into a winning album?

Sadly, no...

“Fucked and left for dead!”

To be totally fair to the Tennessee boys, this isn't a terrible album by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, this is probably the best album of theirs since apparently every album after this one suffered a significant drop in quality one after the other. Like almost any album, even with the bad ones, it has its moments that are really worth it like the rip roaring opening to 'Alone In The Morgue' or the melodic and symphonic ending to the title track. Now these individual moments could almost make the album worth it if it was in any way consistent. But sadly, for every really solid moment like this, there are at least three or four other problems that seem to crop up to overshadow these little glimpses of goodness.

“This is war!”

First thing, breakdowns galore. Now I have no problem with breakdowns in music as long as they're done tastefully, are able to be distinguished from song to song, and they serve their purpose: to transition to the next part of a song via a sped-up riff, a really heavy bass drop, a change up in the riffing, a drum pattern, or whatever have you. If you want an example of how to do breakdowns really well, may I point to Lamb Of God's second album (and their third overall as a musical group), "As The Palaces Burn". This album shows how to do breakdowns in the best way without them saturating the rest of the music and having a great sense of variety. One of this record's biggest pitfalls, and a problem that plagues lots of deathcore and metalcore bands and albums, is its heavy over reliance on breakdowns. Every single song has a breakdown in it. On its own, that's a problem because it shows that the band doesn't know how to make interesting and memorable song progressions, but it gets even worse because every breakdown sounds either similar or the same. With the exception of a song like the title track, every breakdown in very predictable. You know when it's coming and when it does finally show, you'll either groan in frustration or laugh because of how out of place it is.

Another thing that I have an issue with is the vocal performance of Phil Bozeman and the lyrics. The lyrics themselves are very hit or miss and they miss more often than they hit. The concept in and of itself is about Jack the Ripper, but the lyrical interpretations read more like some random tough guy trying to pose as Jack the Ripper. Listen to some of these lyrics:

“I ripped her limb from fucking limb,
Just one less slut to walk this fucking Earth,
I will spit right in your fucking face,
How does it taste after your lips are sewed beneath your waist?
You will never fuck again!”
--Track 9, “Vicer Exciser”

Here's another:

“Don't fuck up the process,
It won't be much longer until you die,
Just let me have my fun and I will let you die in peace,
Oh, wait, I lied.
False hope is my new trend.”
–Track 5, “Fairy Fay”

It doesn't give the impression that you're in the shoes of the infamous serial killer. I understand very much that Jack was described as being very smug and sure of himself by authorities and witnesses, but these kinds of lyrics are childish and don't feel disgusting, sick, or disturbing. They're laughable and painful. There's only a few lyrics I remember reading that were of any merit to me and those were in the songs 'Alone In The Morgue' and the title track. When it comes to the delivery of these lyrics, Phil Bozeman, the frontman and sole vocalist for Whitechapel, annoys me. He's not the worst vocalist I've ever heard, but he's surely not the best. He enunciates his words somewhat clearly when he growls and screams, and he has a really prominent register that you can feel in your gut when he hits those deep, deep gurgling gutturals. The problem I have comes from the lack of variety with his delivery. It's hard for me to adequately explain, but it sounds very much like he's talking normally while he's growling. It's not very compelling when he's doing this tedious delivery throughout the record. There's some parts where he chooses to pick up the pace on certain songs and sounds full of energy on those, but for most of the record, it gets boring to listen to.

Another problem is the lack of variety in the riffage, but this time it seems to be two-fold because it seems like the band cannot keep a consistent tempo throughout. All the way through, on almost every song, the tempo tends to slow down and the guitars fall out of sync with the drums and the vocals can't hope to keep up either. It doesn't sound good and it feels like they were playing their parts separate from one another, a couple guys in the studio in one city and the rest of the guys in another studio in another city. There's not a ton of cohesion or tightness in their performances as a unit and it makes some of the songs a bit hard to listen to. As far as the riffing goes, it's very simplistic. Lots of boring single note palm-muted chugging that's very primitive and uninteresting, to say the least. The moments that some would consider death metal like the quick tremolo picking are low-grade generic crap that anybody who has played guitar for a few months and has an ear for good death metal can play with their eyes closed. There's not a lot of play or chemistry between the three different guitarists here, either. Everything here could have been done with just one guitarist and a session guitarist and nothing would've been lost in the ether. Oh, and as is expected in a genre like this, the bass is pretty much nonexistent. It follows right behind the guitars and does nothing impressive. Then again, I don't even think a bass was necessary here. It may as well not even be there. With three guitarists, they may as well not even have bothered enlisting the help of a bassist. I'm pretty sure the bassist in this band could've booked a better gig after this kind of treatment.

Maybe that's because the album is so monstrously overproduced. Everything is so unabashedly clean and it kind of feels lifeless in some places. The guitars are so polished, the drums sound so damn polished, that if there was any rawness this album was going for, it was lost in the extremely good production values. I don't mind a clean and polished production in my metal albums, but for a concept like this, you want there to be a little rawness in there. Leave some dirt behind to muddy the sound a bit to give the illusion of walking down a disgusting alleyway in the rainy darkness as prostitutes are being cut down to size.

Now with all the bad things I've said about this record, are there any actual good moments? Yes, there are. The second breakdown on 'Alone In The Morgue' really stands out from just about every other breakdown on the album. I love how it's delivered and the riff that scrapes in the background like a knife across stainless steel really gives the song a dark, ominous presence as it trudges towards its conclusion. The opening riff on 'Articulo Mortis' is really chaotic as all hell, and the title track is fantastic. Kevin Lane, the drummer on this album, is definitely the star of the show. He creates some amazing fills and super fast pounding up and down the kit that is to be admired. He's constantly on the move here with moments that definitely give weight to some of the moments that you'd expect to suck. He saves them with a pretty solid performance. As well, as I've said before, Phil Bozeman's really deep growls definitely punch you in the gut when they hit. 'Prostatic Fluid Asphyxiation' isn't that bad of a track in some spots, especially in the first minute, which is one of the best parts of the album. That is, until it gets to the part where he screams that one unintentionally hilarious line before this abomination of a breakdown hits. You might wind up shutting the album off completely or pause the album to catch your breath after you've laughed so hard because of just how awful that part was.

In conclusion, this album isn't a good album, but it's not terrible enough for me to avoid recommending. It can get kind of funny at times with its atrocious lyrics that try so hard to be taken seriously, so just based off that it gets points. As I made clear at the beginning, I'm not a big consumer of deathcore material, and this is probably one of the better deathcore albums to come out. I'm just going to assume that, but I'm really not going to proceed further down the Whitechapel rabbit hole. This album has too many problems for me to continue, not to mention 'The Saw Is The Law' didn't make me want to check out Whitechapel any less than I already did upon hearing this album from start to finish.

I'll stick to Carnifex and All Shall Perish.

RECOMMENDED TRACKS:
-'The Somatic Defilement'
-'Alone in the Morgue'
-'Articulo Mortis'

Rating: 5 out of 10