8 :: Deafheaven

The first known appearance of the term “deaf heaven” in the English language occurs in William Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 29,” a poem which reads like the inspiration for Deafheaven’s sophomore record, vocalist George Clarke describing Sunbather as an album about the dream of a perfect existence and the tension that creates with our impoverished, decaying realities. Whereas most black metal or hard-edged rock bands of Deafheaven’s ilk would likely have used that theme to express a malcontent rage and launch a visceral assault, Deafheaven instead look to a shuddering grandeur to make their point. Like Billy’s sonnet, they seem intent on finding the grace notes in the internal conflict, every last one, and then arranging those notes into the most epic ode to real joy I’ve heard in a minute. So Sunbather might not be the “best” album of 2013, but hell if it’s not the biggest, and big in a way that matters. It completely sweeps one away.

And it’s bracing. The drumming is often what you’d expect in genre—absurdist maximalism—but it’s not four minutes into the record when Daniel Tracy delivers a 4/4 downbeat on snare that ensures your head’s rhythmic allegiance. Guitarist and co-founder Kerry McCoy seems to be looking for the simplest possible ways to craft chord progressions and lead parts that are both fresh and effective; he hits a home run, earning the shoegazer and best-of-’90s-indie-rock comparisons while finding a context in which to subvert them. Also, I have to say, it’s getting increasingly rare to hear a musician explore what the electric guitar can do on an elemental or structural level instead of through an abundance of production effects or striving to complement a groove. Never ornate, pensive yet confident, McCoy’s guitar takes us places as listeners that we are all too happy to go, that we’ve never been before or feels like ages since we have. And in the album segues the band indulges whole-heartedly everything besides metal: low-key dynamics, GYBE-esque recordings, piano chords at the end of “Irresistible” that sound like the layman shit I play at home. But this record’s concessions to something bigger than its niche go beyond the post-rock breakdowns and genteel interludes; distortion, blast beats, even Clarke’s shredded screamo vocals—all somehow used in a design towards giving out max euphoria. It’s black metal, but black under sugar ‘n’ cream while the roast itself is velvet.

And yet the black metal purists will declare that, fundamentally, this is not black metal, and that’s probably fair enough, though not so much for the stylistic variances as for the fact that Deafheaven take black metal’s god/anti-god complex and turn it on its head. Man of Steel is a shit movie but has a not-so-shit line where Jor-El hammers home the Christ-figure mission for his son Superman, stating that Supes will give the human race an ideal to strive for and they will chase after him and fall but eventually will join him “in the sun.” Sunbather affirms two very important things: 1) music is divine, and 2) we can have righteous communion with and through it.

There’s a great Youtube video of Deafheaven performing “Dream House” at a show and the front row of the crowd is utterly caught in the music’s throes, reaching to the sky, performing along with the band, enraptured. Having grown up in the church, I’ve sort of seen this scene before. Thoughts drowned, senses subsumed, Nirvana is bliss but not exactly ignorance; it’s the heightened awareness of one thing at the expense of others, that one thing being the unbearable presence of Now. Pain, ecstasy, and the sublime on amplifiers, while Clarke howls at a confrontation with an “ocean of light.” Sorry, Shakespeare, but heaven is deaf because its music is so fucking loud. Worship.

► “Dream House”
► “Sunbather”