“If forced to pin a “Dark Souls metal” tag on a band, Bell Witch, not Soulmass, comes to mind. Bleak and suffocating, funeral doom always smelled like the proper representation of a nightmarish world bent under centuries of decay and despair. Soulmass’ 2014 debut Despairing Fates approximated its subject matter’s grind-you-to-sand difficulty more closely than its forlorn atmosphere. Their tempestuous death metal crushed as many souls as advertised, but five years later, that flame is extinguished. The Weakness of Virtue looms instead, spreading doom and death in the jolly cooperation that its subject matter so desperately craves.” Soulmass effect.
