On April 25th, 2023, a bright yet chilly Tuesday evening in Downtown Chicago at the historic House of Blues, Whitechapel took the stage to perform their 2019 album The Valley in full to a packed theater. Following their three opening tourmates, Entheos, Signs of the Swarm, and Archspire respectively, Whitechapel pushed through their seventh album despite some challenges for vocalist Phil Bozeman. The night was filled with plenty of melodic grooves, vocals that pushed the likes of death metal to its limits, and of course circle pits and Walls of Death.
Formed in 2006, Whitechapel has experimented with death metal, metalcore, and groove and progressive metal, combining elements to create their now signature deathcore sound. The Valley, released on March 29th, 2019, marked a few changes for the band, as it featured their first song that included almost entirely clean vocals–the fourth track “Hickory Creek,” which was released as a single mere days before the album came out. The Valley is also a concept album, based on events from Bozeman’s childhood, centering on themes such as death, murder, abuse, and depression. Although Bozeman has never let it define him, his adolescent years were marked by tragedy. At the age of ten, he lost his father due to a sudden cardiac event, and his mother eventually remarried. The family’s stepfather was abusive and introduced Bozeman’s mother to drugs, culminating in her death from an overdose only five years after the death of his father. She also struggled with schizophrenia, which is explored in the album’s first track “When a Demon Defiles a Witch.” “Black Bear” touches on his stepfather’s abuse. The band would follow up with 2021’s Kin, considered to be a continuation of the stories from The Valley.
Following the release of the album, the band was unable to continue their international tour in support of The Valley due to the COVID-19 pandemic emerging almost exactly a year later. As such, the band would continue writing, release an eighth album, and wait patiently until they could tour again. Their time would come four years after The Valley‘s release. 2023 is another year of making up for lost time for many bands especially, and Whitechapel is certainly taking advantage of that.
Before their headlining tour, the last time Whitechapel visited Chicago was at Pilsen’s Radius in October 2022, where they opened up for Between the Buried and Me and Trivium for the latter’s Deadmen and Dragons tour. The House of Blues, seated in the heart of the Loop, is a considerably smaller venue, with approximately a 1,800-person capacity compared to about a 3,800-person capacity at Radius, but that does not take away from the theater’s stunning sound quality, open space, and fantastic stage.
At exactly 7:00 p.m., Entheos, hailing from Santa Cruz, California, kicked off the night with a mix of extreme metal and deathcore. Formed in 2015, they are considered a super-group, including ex-members from the band’s Animosity, Animals as Leaders, and The Faceless. Led by vocalist Chaney Crabb, who never stayed in one place for longer than three seconds, bouncing from one side of the stage to the other while unleashing deep growls and high screams, Entheos proved to be an incredibly strong start to the night and an entertaining opener.
After Entheos came Signs of the Swarm, a death metalcore band from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, that ramped up the crowd even more, encouraging the crowd to “put security to work” as they collected multiple crowd surfers edging toward the pit and witness intense circle pits and at least one Wall of Death.
Following Signs of the Swarm was Archspire, an extremely technical death metal group from Vancouver, British Columbia, donning their motto “Stay Tech” on both their drum head and the singer’s gold chain. Despite a noticeably less enthusiastic crowd, the band kept the same energy going, the vocalist’s mix of rapping and growling quite literally matching the speed of the drummer’s double bass.
And finally, following warmups from the headliner’s three openers, Whitechapel began the march through The Valley. However, vocalist Phil Bozeman prefaced their set by announcing to the crowd that he was, unfortunately, sick but would power through their performance.
“If you guys know the words, I need you to help me,” he says to a cheering myriad of fans, a request they were more than ready for. His struggle was apparent during the first track “When a Demon Defiles a Witch,” unable to finish some of his screams and allowing the audience to finish the verse for him. He remained seated for the majority of “Hickory Creek,” the band’s rarity of a ballad and one of the strongest songs of the album despite barely featuring any screams. Nearly immediately after, Bozeman leaps back up with all of the strength he can muster as the band launches into “Black Bear,” the audience echoing his notorious lyrics, “As I lay me down to sleep / I pray to the Lord to put me six feet deep.” As the night progressed, the longer the band performed, the less you would have known Bozeman was not at his physical best. Despite also remaining seated during “Third Depth,” his vocals were as unrelenting and powerful as ever, the band nearly matching their studio performance live.
Once the final track on The Valley, “Doom Woods” concluded, the band was not done yet. They launched into their latest hit “I Will Find You” from Kin before commencing their encore of three more songs–“Old Chapel,” as Bozeman called it. They began their final set of songs with “Prostatic Fluid Asphyxiation,” from their 2007 debut album The Somatic Defilement, then jumped into “Possession” from 2008’s This is Exile before letting the song bleed right into the same album’s title track and final act of the night. The band’s energy truly resonated with the crowd, ringing out even after the band exited the stage. The fans’ love for this band was quite apparent that night, and we can safely assume Whitechapel will return to the Windy City even stronger than ever.
