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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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