It’s been 10 years since I last heard the Chicago Black metal act Withering Soul. It was 2015’s Adverse Portrait, where the band delivered a far more aggressive and improved take on symphonic black metal, and dropped some of the more gothic/November’s Doom influences from the 2011 debut, No Closure.
Now, I have not heard 2021’s Last Contact, but it appears co-founder Christophor Grimes’ time in fellow Chicagoan war metalers Blood Of the Wolf since 2018 has rubbed off, as Withering Soul is much more abrasive and intense than I recall.
Still largely black metal and certainly strains of symphonic black metal are there, with keyboards still scattered generously around the material, but this is less Dimmu Borgir-ish than the first two albums, and leans a little harder into the black/death Blood of the Wolf (i.e. “The Monolith Embodied”, “Gallery of the End”) sound mixed with Grime’s early Veneficum (one of the USA’s early entries into symphonic black metal) days.
It results in an excellent album from the tail end of 2025, with more than a few highlights or standouts, especially when the band gets a little more aggressive as heard on “Attrition Horizon”, searingly melodic personal favorites “Grievance Eludes the Light” and “Gallery of the End”, or the 7-minute “Trajectory”.
The album ends on a nice, beefier, more militant number in “Burden of the Valiant”, and the album has been a nice reminder of a band I had forgotten about, but is certainly back on my radar again now.
