DEAFHEAVEN: “LONELY PEOPLE WITH POWER”

(The following is Wil Cifer‘s review of the new album by San Francisco’s Deafheaven, released on March 28th through Roadrunner Records.)

Six albums into their career, these guys are not out to win over any new fans. Yet this might catch the ears of casual listeners who got lured in by the hype surrounding 2013’s Sunbather, which found these guys the talk of hipsters at craft breweries everywhere.

The band seemed to not give a shit about critical acclaim, and rather than try to double down on the post-rock formula that made Sunbather successful, they have ventured into darker corners and toyed with varied blends of shoe-gaze, black metal, and even thrashing screamo. This new album finds the band striking a perfect balance among these stark contrasts, and creating an album that is in some ways more experimental than Sunbather but also darker and angrier.

“Magnolia,” one of the album’s lead singles, brings to the table very deliberate head-banging riffs. George Clarke has mentioned Weakling as one of the band’s prevalent influences, and that can be heard here. “The Garden Route” follows more closely to the Sunbather formula, with Clarke snarling over the shoe-gazing whimsy.

There is a great range of guitar tones on this album, and the production is not too different from what we have heard in the past, though the vocals feel like they are sitting further back in the mix at times. On “Heathen” you can hear how George‘s singing voice continues to improve. This one feels more like a breezy indie rock song before it explodes into the black metal dynamic. The album’s longest, “Amethyst,” sprawls out for over eight minutes, lulling you with a shimmering post-rock lullaby, until the screaming starts around the two-minute mark as the guitars begin to add layers of intensity without having to dig into the bag of metal chugs.

There is a great depth to their songwriting, as they are more sonically dense, but it flows gracefully. I often complain about bands being more focused on dialing in a sound, and not placing as much emphasis on the storytelling of songwriting. These guys give a master class on how to have both.

There is more aggression to the thrashing accents of the riff that drives “Revelator”. It might be the album’s most metallic attack, but it still proves to be very nuanced. In the last two minutes, there is a jarring swerve into atmosphere, which is an example of what might be one of this album’s most endearing strengths. They do not default into a predictable formula of dynamics; even when the vocals shift from singing to screaming, it never feels like some Myspace era metal-core album.

“Body Behavior” might be the album’s best song as it finds them grooving with more of a post-punk tension, and the vocals are snarled but in a more punk fashion. Their willingness to experiment pays off big here, but they still allow themselves the release of erupting into a blasting storm.

Of the three “Incidental” interludes, the second one with Jae Matthews from Boy Harsher feels the most like a song, despite Paul Banks of Interpol appearing on the third one. He only offers a spoken-word muttering over the ambience. “Winona” bleeds out from this one, as the pristine nature of guitar tones and the time taken to craft them is given a spotlight, though the real MVP on this song is drummer Daniel Tracy, whose playing elevates what the rest of the band are doing to create a massive arena-shaking sound.

The last song, “The Marvelous Orange Tree,”  serves as a fitting summary of what they are about on this album, with the sung vocals once again floating in from the depths of Clarke‘s depression to serve as a counterpoint to his inner demons normally being vomited forth.

This album might be the band’s most diverse yet, and perhaps in terms of songwriting, these are some of the most beautifully adventurous pieces they have written thus far. Fans of the band will be able to find a little of everything they have liked about these guys from the past, but with new stylistic shifts woven in.

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