Rapture – Songs For The Withering Review

Originally written by Ryan Plunkett

When the rain is pouring outside and the sky is enveloped in gray, this is the music I expect to hear in the background. Rapture’s latest album, Songs for the Withering, is melancholy and depressing, and at the same time, beautiful. The first thing most people are going to think when they pop this disc in is that it sounds very reminiscent of Katatonia’s early work. This is hardly the truth, however, despite some similarities, because Rapture has created a sound all their own.

The band got a lot of buzz with their first album, Futile, but Songs for the Withering is the album that will stamp them on the metal map. These Finlanders base their music around crafty songwriting to reach out and tug at the listeners emotions. With the dual vokill attack of Petri Eskelinen and Henri Villberg you can expect powerful growling vokills and melodic clean singing. In the last song “Farewell” you also get some awesome dark sounding spoken word.

As I said before, Rapture is all about songwriting prowess. Tomi Ullgren and Aleksi Ahokas do a fabulous job of melding heavy death/doom riffs with the expansive soundscape of their melodic side. Aleksi also does a great job with the bass work, creating a very smooth, dark sound. Sure, the music isn’t amazingly complex, but with songwriting this strong, it hardly matters.

Songs for the Withering will suck you into its dreary landscape straight from the beginning, and the outlook on life only gets bleaker as you progress through each song. With a release like this I see no problem in whole-heartedly recommending you go pick it up immediately.

Posted by Old Guard

The retired elite of LastRites/MetalReview.

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