Leviathan from Black Octopus Sound

This review could not possibly begin to even scratch the surface of this incredible mega-collection of sounds spanning all electronic music genres. In the making for over a year and a half, Black Octopus Sound delivers sonic perfection in Leviathan.

This beast weighs in at over 4GB and 5,000+ samples! It’s truly unreal just how many top shelf sounds are in this collection. Seriously, we’re still reeling from the initial impact of opening this pack up. It’s almost unfair to have so many quality sounds in one place. Almost. The name Leviathan is fitting.

Alright, let’s jump into this.

Obviously there are way too many sounds in the Leviathan collection to start singling things out in this review, so we are going to take a more global approach and stick to overall quality, tips, details we noticed, etc. And we have some short demo clips for you throughout the post, so settle in, get comfy and hold on tight. It’s gonna be a little crazy.

First, we need to cover what exactly you will find in the  Leviathan collection. As unbelievable as some of these numbers may seem, trust us, we’ve double and triple checked. Everything is detailed below.

Let’s talk Drums!

– 267 kick drums! All tuned to key and loaded with power. Yep, that is indeed a lot of kick drums.
– 285 Snares, claps, and pre-shifted claps all ready to go. You won’t be buying any more of these for quite a while!
– 386 Hi-hats, Cymbal rides and crashes, each brimming with crisp and sharp character to help cut through any mix.
– 363 Percussive sounds, sub hits, live recorded hand drums, tambourines, & shakers…need we say more?
– 127 Drum fills to help extend your grooves and 58 bonus Tom drums ready to fatten up those beats even more!
– 388 Additional drum loops, just to make sure you have way more reasons than you really need to keep using this sample pack.

What about the synths?

– 292 Synth stabs to add that percussive synth magic everyone loves so much.
– 207 Chord stabs, because sometimes you just need some chords.
– 664 Bass samples, long sustained notes, tweaked filters, vocoder growls and resampled reeces! ‘Nuff said!

FX, Sampled Instruments, Pro Tips & More!

– 227 Rising & Falling FX perfect to power up and smooth over your transitions. All labelled in 1,2, 4, 8, and 16 bar increments.
– 42 Long atmospheric FX – eerie ambiences, vinyl dust & crackle, euphoric textures and much more!
– 76 Impacts & bombs to add some serious BOOM to your projects!
– 136 Short FX because not every sound can be long. Besides, it’s not always about the size of the FX, you know.
– 121 Glitch FX – Alien parasites, robotic transformers and other things you might want to be consider being scared of.
– 81 Multi-sampled instruments. Yes, you read that correctly–81!
– 334 Music Loops ready to drop into your projects or simply to use for inspiration.
– And 1 Producer Tip sheet to provide you with some helpful guidance and sage wisdom along the way.

OH! Almost forgot…And a partridge in a pear tree. Of course.

The amount of sonic impact in each one of the sounds we tested (we didn’t have enough time in the days to use them all, but we did hear them all!) was really quite impressive. Here in the Lab we tend to want full control over all sounds, all the time. And we were pleased to see and hear that the samples in the Leviathan collection handled processing very well. Pitch modulation, time stretching, key tracking manipulation, extreme effects routing…the sounds passed the tests each and every time.

Usually, I personally prefer to pick up smaller sample packs because there seems to be a tipping point that most large collections reach, where the quality is sacrificed in the name of quantity. But that is certainly not the case with Leviathan. And I am very pleased to have found a (very) large sample collection that shatters that trend. And I’m not harshing on any sound design companies out there. It’s just so difficult to deliver superior quality in that many sounds so consistently. So our hat is off to the team at Black Octopus Sound for a job well-done and finding a way to get it all done at this high level of excellence.

Below is a small demo track we put together using only a small handful of samples from the Leviathan collection.

Absolutely no processing of any kind was used, save for a small amount of panning modulation on one synth, for added interest. This is not to say that we did not put the sounds in this collection through the ringer. Quite the opposite, actually. Every single sound we tested stood up to all the processing and effects we threw at it. It is not very often you find perfectly processed samples like this, ready and willing to be shaped and molded into whatever you have in mind for them.

From time and tempo stretching to pitch manipulation, these samples came through shining. Some serious impact is bottled up in each one and it almost comes across as pressure. One the lid has been lifted on one of these sounds, it takes off. But enough about how much we love the sound already. Here’s something to listen to. We took a minimal approach with this demo to let the individual sounds shine through so you have a decent feel for what to expect when you begin using these sounds yourself