From the information I've gathered about the one-man project Pedestal for Leviathan, I know I'm in for a wild ride. Kendrick Lemke hails from Colorado, and this is at least his seventh project. Pedestal for Leviathan is his way of blending symphonic, blackened, and brutal death metal into cassette-sized chunks. This genre mix sounds pretty complicated, so I hope there's an equal balance of all elements. The album is barely twenty-four minutes, so there's not a lot of time for Lemke to work with. Nevertheless, on with the music.

The single of the album is "Lycanthropichrist." From the first couple seconds I instantly get all three genres - black metal drumming, symphonic instrumentation and atmosphere, and distant brutal vocals. The singing is extremely low-pitched, so don't expect to make out any lyrics. The drumming dances on the lines of black and death metal, and sometimes it can't make up its mind. The riffs are interesting, though. As the track nears its end, some final attempts to shove more symphony down your throat are thrown in, with some bursts of piped-in strings and synths. I'm not fully impressed with the song, and I'm not sure how the other tracks are going to handle all the ideas Lemke throws into it.

"Chalice Bleeds Intoxicant" starts with a spooky combination of organs and (probably fake) orchestration. The brutal death metal aspects kick in with the snare kick-starting a slam with extra down-tuned chugs and vocals that sound like a drain. Other than the first and last moments, there's not much else to say. "Summoning Sickness" simply isn't mixed well. The metal isn't bad, but the symphonious elements just seem shoved in. The definite highlight is the singing - the gutturals are held for mind-boggling amounts of time. "Sanctity of Retribution" begins yet again with a supposed violin pizzicato, and here I start to sense the theme of the songs opening symphonically. Again, not horrible metal, and the guitars create an atmosphere I can vibe with. Right in the middle of the brutality there are distant plucking sounds, and it just... doesn't work for me. The first half of the album is over, and while I'm continuing on with the second half, I'm doing it begrudgingly.

"Purgatory Displacement" is a track where the "orchestra" takes a back seat to muddy, brutal death metal. It's still there, of course. Surprisingly, some hardcore-like vocals chime in, shouting rather than gurgling. "Karmic Recollection Mirror" tries to recreate the soundscapes of Transylvania, but just like the rest of the tracks, I'm not moved by anything about it. The song is shorter, but not as short as the minute-long track "Snow Covered Monolith." The former track has some meat to it, while the latter is just a short interlude consisting purely of the one element of this album I'm starting to dislike. "Warlock Blacksmith" ties things up with a chunky groove that admittedly got my head bobbing.

After listening to "Enter: Vampyric Manifestation," I found out there were actually three bonus tracks, not on streaming services. The three tracks are taken from Pedestal for Leviathan's first EP, "Festering Apparition." I skipped these tracks, as it's essentially just another release, and I don't think listening to them is necessary. All in all, this album isn't a great example of symphonic elements in metal, the production could be way better, and that better not be AI on that cover.