finally. finally someone had the sense to press the debut full length of whitechapel to vinyl. i remember lively how i discovered the band for me. it was 2008, i believe and it was the high time of a social network called myspace. through friends-lists i stumbled upon numerous great bands and one of them was whitechapel. they had two songs of their debut in their music player - the title track and "devirgination studies". i was playing them to death and ordered a cd copy via the amazon market place for cheap. then i played the cd and thus the whole album to death.
i still have my cd copy and every once in a while, after i listened to one of my whitechapel records on vinyl and the question arose, why there was no vinyl edition of "the somatic defilement", i grabbed the cd for a listen. so you may understand my excitement when i saw this very album on vinyl for pre-order at emp.de. without a moments hestitation i made my way through the payment process and waited for the album to arrive. now i finally hold the lp in my hands and the album aged damn well.
it's a record without any flaws. the record is less progressive than their further output and way more direct but still with great technical skills and fantastic song writing. lyrically it's all about stories about women obsessed serial killers. that changed on further records but seems logical with regard to the band's name - whitechapel is the district in london where the infamous jack the ripper struck terror into people's hearts. the only little downer is the revised cover art, which metal blade used for their cd re-release from 2013. the original candlelight records release cover would have been cooler. on the other hand the vinyl colour looks sharp. 300 copies on tan marble a.k.a. "pale violet marbled" vinyl. metal blade. 2017.
