Jef Whitehead, better known as Leviathan, has had quite an interesting artist course leading up to his new album Scar Sighted due out Mar. 3 via Profound Lord Records. In an incredibly lengthy interview with Noisey, Whitehead talks about his departure from black metal on the new record:
"I don’t think I’m really making black metal anymore. It’s not for me to say Leviathan’s black metal, because I don’t know what the fuck it is. But it’s not, every once in a while I’ll listen to older stuff I’ve done, and I’m like yeah that’s textbook black metal. But now I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing."
How much he hates his 2011 record True Traitor, True Whore, which dealt with an alleged domestic abuse case involving Whitehead and his then girlfriend:
"I’ve been in bands before I started Leviathan, but it’s very personal and it’s a way as release, and it’s brought a lot of stuff out of me. But that’s more of the lyrical content. A lot of it’s just, and it’s gonna sound corny, but it’s just experimenting and trying to find chord progressions, or putting notes together. Someone told me when a piece of music makes you sad, the sounds reverberate in the lyrics and make you sad. I don’t know if that’s true, but I find it really interesting. And I’ve always been attracted to darker or melancholy music. But I’ve always tried to do something different, or something I haven’t done before. I don’t think any of my records sound like the record before it. And thank god, because True Traitor sucks. That record is fucking terrible. I was curious and listened to that a couple weeks ago."
And also about his new band Devout with his girlfriend:
"So Stevie and I met in Boise, Idaho, and I came back to Portland with her, and Stevie at that point was just working on her eight-track all the time. And we started making all these songs, but we didn’t have a drumset so we sort of did a drum circle for lack of a better word. One track of me hitting a bass drum with a wooden spoon, one track of me hitting glass, it’s pretty interesting. We eventually did get a drum set, and all the songs are really different. It’s really cool working with her, and she’s got a shit ton of great ideas. It’s taking a long time to figure out Ableton and all that stuff. There’s something about Devout that we’re just really excited about."
Oh, and then there's the new song "Within Thrall," which starts off hymnal, ends hymnal and includes a whole lot of manic grooving in between. Check it out!
