Leviathan, a/k/a Wrest, a/k/a Jef Whitehead is accused of doing some bad shit. I'm not going to go into it here, since a simple google search will produce all the salient details. I will only say this, while I am certainly hoping that he has been falsely accused, whether or not he committed the crime has little bearing on my ability to enjoy his music. Some people struggle ad nauseum about whether or not you can separate the artist from the art, and whether or not that means the art should be thrown out if the artist is a particularly deplorable person. I am not one of those people. A lot of that probably has to do with my day job as a criminal defense attorney. I've seen a lot of people do a lot of really bad shit, much worse than Whitehead is accused of, and at the same time I have never met a monster. I've only met people who have done some abhorrent things in their lives, stuff that under different circumstances, we would all be capable of, if we are honest with ourselves. Yes, some of them are more, or less, scum, but not a one of them haven't been human to some degree, and humans capable of destruction are also sometimes capable of creating great art. Therefore, the personality or actions of the artists doesn't really ruin the art for me. Burzum is a piece of shit, but his music is some of the greatest of the last 20 years, and I'll continue to buy and enjoy his records as quickly as he can produce them. On a smaller scale, rumor has it that the best new band of the last three years is comprised of a couple of real assholes (and one decent guy), but so what? I'm not looking to be friends with them, I just want to hear their music.So I went into "True Traitor, True Whorrer" with no real prejudices, but the personal life of Whitehead was impossible to escape when listening to this record. Recorded after Whitehead was released on bond from jail, the album is clearly a response to the charges against him and the person who brought them. It is also the portrait of a human being at the bottom of their existence. Wrest may rip on them now, but at one time his recordings had all the structure and linear power of Wolves In The Throne Room. Such is not the case here. "True Traitor, True Whorrer" is an absolute sonic mess. Oddly, this is the first ever Leviathan album produced in a studio. Producer extraordinaire Sanford Parker is responsible for sound, and given his track record of producing some of the crispest and clearest metal records of the last couple of years, it can only be assumed that this atrocity exhibition are what both Parker and Whitehead were aiming for, and certainly given the subject matter it makes sense. This is a document of a man turned inside out, of a living nightmare that won't end. Parker literally turns these songs inside out until they are a grotesque stew of primal blind rage. As a result, everything is buried beneath the bubbling fiery surface of these tracks, which sound like an animal that is either wounded or psychotic, or maybe both. This is not an easy listen, or one that I completely love, nor is it anywhere near Wrest's best work, but it is a singular unflinching piece of art. Arguably it is also one of the most challenging and confrontational pieces of art in any medium in some time, yet all the same, deep within it's hellscape is a living breathing human being that is clawing to escape from his confines. Whether that hell is of his own making, or one to which he has been unjustly imprisoned to by another remains to be seen, either way "True Traitor, True Whorrer" is a singular and unique monument to the darkest realms of human existence.
"Blood Red and True"
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