Leviathan - Unfailing Fall Into Naught (Ascension Monuments Media, 2018)

Since Scar Sighted in 2015, Jef Whitehead aka Wrest aka Leviathan has been mostly reissuing old albums and demos. 2018 shows the first stirrings of new Leviathan music with splits with Crawl and Nachtmystium on the docket. But first, some more reissuing. This set is compiled from Leviathan's sides of splits with Xasthur (from 2004) and Sapthuran (from 2006). The first five tracks are from the Sapthuran split, and what kind of doubles-down on the cash grab of this release is that these 5 tracks were already released separately in 2006 - as a record called The Blind Wound on Southern Lord. The newer tracks are sequenced first on the album which is interesting. They certainly sound like the more fully-formed version of Leviathan - blackened, thrashy, serrated as hell. Whereas the older tracks indeed still sound like he's finding his footing - they're slower, a little more doom-y, and with dustier production. They actually sound a bit like Xasthur himself. From the 2006 tracks, "Crushing the Prolapsed Oviducts of Virtue" is a real gem because it's almost got a.......groove? That's menacing and just totally locked in. In the older ones, the title track brings the doomy BM atmosphere while "The Remotest Cipher" is a keyboard-laden, hypnotic stomp. Cool to catch up with some golden era Leviathan, I wouldn't spend any money on this but hey. I've got the Crawl split up next so let's see how he sounds in 2018.

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Nachtmystium/Leviathan - In the Valley of Death, Where Black Metal is King: An Homage to the Roots (Ascension Monuments Media, 2018)

What the fuck is that title. Okay I get the first part is a Judas Iscariot tribute, but did we really need "an homage to the roots" in there? Hey wouldn't it be funny if these were actually covers of the band The Roots? Anyway. This album was supposed to come out 10 years ago, but it was blocked by the bands' respective labels. Now I guess they've figured out a way, or Blake Judd needs money for drugs so he's figured out a way, to put this out. The Bandcamp version has 8 tracks, 5 from Nachtmystium and 3 from Leviathan, but I've seen a 10-track tracklisting elsewhere. On the version I have, we have Nachtmystium covering Judas Iscariot, Ildjarn (twice), Von and Burzum. Leviathan tackles Ildjarn (twice) and Von once. I seem to be missing Leviathan's Judas Iscariot cover ("Where the Winter Beats Incessant") and one of Nachtmystium's Von covers ("Von"). Weird. Wonder if there were some licensing issues or something. All four Ildjar

Sunburned Hand of the Man - Get Wet with the Animal (Manhand, 2018)

I keep up with Sunburned only intermittently these days, they seem to be taking a more rock-ist approach lately. Like this one. Each track is about 4-5 minutes of pretty ramshackle, jammy, funky, boogie rock...almost spoiled by the throaty, beery vocals shouted over the top of each one of these tunes with nonsensical platitudes. I almost shut it off after a couple tracks but I stuck it out and kinda came around on some level. I was oddly reminded of My War era Black Flag sludge punk. The band sez "these Holy Grail fueled recordings are a mix of iphone and zoom recordings run through garageband, reaper and some plug-ins. We're still working on the much more listener-friendly Black Dirt session..." and point taken, listener friendly this ain't.

Kanye West - Ye (GOOD Music/Def Jam, 2018)

For no real reason other than I guess the fact that he felt he had to put an album out, Ye was cobbled together in a month. And it shows quite plainly. As much as I praised the Ye-produced DAYTONA for making a fully formed album out of a mere 20-odd minutes, here Ye sounds like an odds-n-sods compilation - it literally sounds like a snapshop of a month in the studio with Kanye. Look, I have a lot of time for Kanye('s music). Yeezus is one of the best hip hop albums ever, to say nothing of the classics that preceded it. Obviously most people look at Yeezus as the dividing line between New Kanye and Old Kanye, but I still love it. The Life of Pablo was a little more dicey - it was slipshod, haphazard, scattered, bloated. I was hoping with this new 7-song limit we'd get back to Yeezus-style tightness. Not so much. You can count the good things on this album on one hand - the hooks on "Yikes" and "All Mine", "Ghost Town" which sounds like the only ful

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