Review Summary: More energetic Brave Murder Day era Katatonia with a pinch of Alternative 4 era Anathma
Right from the opening track you know where you are in for, a hybrid mix of Brave Murder Day(BMD) era Katatonia with a pinch of Judgement- Alternative Four era Anathema. In this case here people, I am going to have to say that the students have surpassed the masters. Rapture took the formula of BMD and improved upon it, while doing it they shaved a lot of doom from the sound. From their blatant worship of BMD on their debut album Futile(whom many claims to have surpassed BMD alone) to expanding their sound on their second release
Songs for the Withering(SFTW), this release is essentially SFTW 2.0, so there isn't much progress seen on this release. It shouldn't matter that much if you adored SFTW a lot in the first place.
The overall sound is a composition of goth rock riffs with some of the catchiest dual melodies ever known to man carefully topping the wall of gothic sound. The melodies are central to Rapture, some are depressing while some are weird enough uplifting and hopeful like the melodies present in the chorus of “The Past Nightmares” in which the growls accompany it creating majestic atmosphere. The clean vocals are above average, He kind of sounds like the middle ground between the singers of both Katatonia and Anathema, but not surpassing them in any way, just extremely solid. Whereas the growls on the other hand are excellent, expect BMD styled growls done extremely well. The album seems to have about a 50/50 split amount of growls and cleans. So the album is very accessible to even say, newcomers to death metal. Henri, the lead songwriter of the band is not trying to impress anybody with over the top technicality. The songs are mildly simple keeping to the formula of a melodic yet heavy sound. The pacing of the album is moderate, so it isn't too slow or too fast, it is just right.
If you are yearning for a band to take the old formula of Katatonia and build up on it, this is the band for you. They took the formula and made it more energetic by pumping out more
Murder and
Rainroom styled riffs, don't try to act like you don't know what riffs I'm talking about. This album clocks in at 45 minutes and the songs do differ from one another with there being 2 instrumentals and some songs dedicated to being growled or cleanly sung.
