Leviathan - The Tenth Sub Level of Suicide

The Gen Z really has it rough

Everyone reading this godforsaken article has remembered the early 2000s differently. My parents, idiosyncratic children of the sixties and seventies, were having the time of their lives at the turn of the century, going to rock clubs, playing music, driving from California to Michigan to Texas, getting impulsively married in ‘02 and having me in early ‘03. I had a decent, if not odd upbringing, with my father being a full-time musician. He showed me lots of music from his childhood, but there were plenty of contemporary artists we listened to (and saw) who still released material around the time I was born: Crowded House, Wilco, Yo La Tengo, Ween, and more. I almost wrote this article about Ween’s Quebec, but that would have been almost too on-the-nose. As much as my parents raised me on their music that we love, I still grew up to be an asshole metalhead too, which is why I’m hunched over at my desk 22 years later writing about Leviathan instead.

While the rest of the world was adjusting to the new millennium, hanging out at malls that still existed, eating Cosmic Brownies and drinking Bug Juice, gaming on the family PC in the “computer room,” being jealous of dudes with liberty spikes and JNCOs and heroin-chic girls with eyebrows plucked to hell and back, Jef Whitehead spent most of 2003 sitting in his house recording every part to his first full-length release: The Tenth Sub Level of Suicide, every bit as fucking raw as it sounds. I’m certainly not the first person to write about their “discovery” of this punishing, self-hating soundscape, nor will I be the last, but its place in the DSBM canon and its personal significance to me makes it a perfect topic.

It’s hard to find an album that can stand up to the scrutiny of the elite Vortex, but I think many can agree that Tenth Sub Level is a deserving example of depressive black metal done exceptionally well. It’s been understandably categorized as DSBM (as well as Leviathan’s other releases), but lacks the corny despair, whininess, and slower tempos often attributed to the subgenre. Whitehead’s vocals throughout the album are full of self-directed agony, and he mixes wails, screams, whispers, gutturals, and all sorts of vocal effects to convey this anger. It’s an impressive range, similar enough to other styles that fans of the genre will appreciate it while still remaining unique and identifiable as Whitehead’s voice. Instrumentally, the bass tracks have always stood out to me. Black metal of any type isn’t especially known for having bass that rips, typically favoring treble-y, overdriven guitar, but this is not the case here. Especially in tracks “Sardoniscorn” and “The Idiot Sun,” the bass adds depth and a kind of raw heaviness to the other parts, while also sounding pretty technically proficient. There’s plenty of quality DSBM without bass, but in the case of this album, it definitely adds rather than detracts.

Of course, there’s dark ambient material on the album as well. “The Bitter Emblem of Dissolve,” “Submersed,” and the fading outro in the album’s closer “At The Do” all feature sweeping, haunted ambient bits, reminiscent of the subgenre. As a synths person I’ve always enjoyed some darker atmosphere in black metal (think Oranssi Pazuzu, Bethlehem, Lifelover, Emperor), but it can become overdone very quickly. There’s a lot of shitty albums out there that just repeat stale riffs interladen with sad-sounding, half-assed ambient parts, but Tenth Sub Level is the complete opposite. Whitehead uses these parts sparingly enough that they don’t overrule the album and aren’t even in half the tracks, but places them throughout at just the right moments, adding a sort of “tension-and-release” that adds to an (already) extremely intense album. “Submersed” is the only track I believe is fully ambient, and it functions as an interlude, though doesn’t feel forced or unnecessary at all. I typically don’t think fadeouts are a great idea with metal, especially at the conclusion of albums, but the last few minutes of receding, reverberating noise in “At The Do” imparts a certain sense of finality to the listener that I don’t think would be achieved any other way. The album itself is such a self-hating, destructive, angry piece of music that boils down to the ultimate finality—suicide—and having 71 minutes of intense, punishing sound ending with a few minutes of unsettling resolve is both haunting and fitting.

Anyway, shoutout to my best friend from high school who put on “Fucking Your Ghost In Chains Of Ice” while we were cutting class and smoking weed to scare me seven years ago. You put me on to a pretty neat album.