Parties
93
Deafheaven @ Beep Studios Text: Indran P Image: Aloysius Lim
What: The future of metal announces itself Opening all the illicit doors in the hallways of tradition, the San Francisco outfit, Deafheaven, has become one of the most polarising forces in contemporary metal. And it’s for this very reason that the band is also the most innovative standardbearer of the shape of metal to come. Scoffing at the hammy tendencies of the genre, Deafheaven has, over the course of two fantastic albums, and especially in 2013’s Sunbather, expanded the musical and emotional language of heavy music. Showing that just as byzantine riffage can be a declaration of strength, so can it be a cathartic disclosure of human vulnerability and helplessness, the band has rid the genre of its old gods and given a whole new glow to its horizons. In a snug room that night, we got to see how bright it was. Who: Fans and the sagely hip In an alarming indication of just how inextricably tastes or rather, perceptions of taste, have become from the considerations of genre, Deafheaven has been widely tagged in the blogosphere as a “hipster-metal” act. Now, while debating the truth of this supposed oxymoron is thoroughly needless, it is safe to say that the crowd reflected either end of the band’s hyphenated impression. For every person who screamed the lyrics to “The Pecan Tree”, there was a tote-toting individual who just looked thrilled to be there.
How: New metal now “Dream House” is the nineminute tapestry of distortion that kicks off Sunbather. And it’s with that exactly that Deafheaven opened its set. Ripping forth from a gnashing spray of jagged chords, the song exploded into various moments of windmill power where each mythic breakdown was accompanied by a pristine passage of starlit guitars. With George Clarke’s pointed, piercing shrieks merging with empyrean guitars and megaton drums, the song’s ambrosial sadness and anger came alive in beautiful ways. Laying further waste to metal’s largely greyscale environs, the band also invoked “Vertigo” and “The Pecan Tree”, where shimmering shoegaze guitar waltzes melded with obliterating noise to colossally colourful effect. Translating pummeling aggression into spiritual texture, Deafheaven added a glorious addendum to the canon of metal and marked its place within with stirring grandiosity.