Black metal is one of the most serious yet comical genres under the blanket of metal. Just look at the corpse paint, gauntlets and the bands that focus on their image as opposed to quality tunes. Some really great albums have been done in this style but many times the message and antics of the band overshadow the excellent/completely shitty music they produce so I’m always suspicious whenever a black metal album is getting praise. Enter Leviathan. This band initially intrigued me because their first full-length album was released by tUMULt, which also released one of the most stunning, fantastic and epic black metal albums I’ve ever heard in Weakling’s Dead As Dreams.

Leviathan is commandeered by a man simply known as Wrest. He has all the prerequisites to start a black metal band. Gauntlets, check. Corpse paint, check. Bullet belt, check. He hates Christians, double bonus scene points. All kidding aside, Leviathan and The Tenth Sub Level Of Suicide is fucking great. He plays all the instruments, noise, everything à la Burzum and the infamous homosexual Varg Vikernes. Man it would have been awesome if he served time in say, Attica as opposed to some soft Norwegian prison. I’d pay good money for some type of pay-per-view event of him getting shanked while he’s writing his next "masterpiece." That little weasel would have had his anus plugged by a large black man quicker than you can say "Keep your butthole tight!" Yes, that is pretty sick but I bet some of you twisted fucks would laugh right along with me. Back to Leviathan, the music is bleak and hateful with a great rough production that intensifies the dark atmosphere and contempt Wrest has for the world. His guitar playing frequently builds up a wall of chaos with his tortured, acidic screams at the eye of the storm. There are introspective and quite beautiful moments when he slows everything down and builds a mood with keyboards and sparse guitar work. Wrest’s vocals sound like a demon back from hell, in pain and haunting your existence to make you suffer. All in all, this is a stupendous effort from Wrest. Enough of this horrendous writing go buy this album. It is better to hear the greatness than read what a mollusk, such as myself, who "reviews" because of his inability to create (as Wrest put it in the liner notes). It’s easily one of the best to come out in 2003 or in the entire genre of black metal for that matter.

Written By: GruntCunter