DEAFHEAVEN — Sunbather (review)

Album · 2013 · Atmospheric Black Metal

3/5 · 2024-02-29
siLLy puPPy

Black metal is the biggest promiscuous slut of the metal world having long left the confines of its first and second wave separation zones and unapologetically cross-pollinated with just about any music genre that has ever existed on planet Earth. While acceptable crossover styles with traditional folk music, death metal, progressive rock and other styles have been celebrated as groundbreaking and original, other hybridization attempts have been a bit more divisive which brings us to the world of blackgaze. This style that is basically the unlikely mix of post-rock, shoegaze, post-hardcore and black metal began in 2005 when Neige created the bizarre Alcest project and soon was finding new candidates willing to adopt the style and take it further.

While Alcest didn’t initially make any major waves in the black metal scene, along comes the San Francisco based DEAFHAVEN in 2010 and began its own creative spin of the unusual mix that Alcest had alchemized. Originally a the duo of George Clarke and guitarist Kerry McCoy, DEAFHAVEN released “Roads To Judah” and introduced the style of blackgaze to a larger audience beyond the confines of the underground black metal scene. While that album got the engine revving, it was the band’s second release SUNBATHER that took the world by storm and finally put the blackgaze style and the world of black metal on the map for the masses. SUNBATHER saw a third member, drummer Dan Tracy join the DEAFHAVEN team and the album expanded the blackgaze sound by adopting elements of alternative rock, post-metal, field recordings and droning.

While met with critical acclaim from many music critics, the album also polarized the world of black metal with many open minded experimentalists welcoming the new musical chimera with open arms and the less than accepting black metal purists who wanted the underground black metal scene to remain in its own little kvlt time capsule never to be tainted with such impurities. The irony is that many post-rock and shoegaze fans who never even heard black metal before were being exposed to the world of black metal for the first time and DEAFHAVEN’s crossover appeal for better or for worse made a huge impact on the entire extreme metal industry simply by being popular. It should be obvious in retrospect that the nasty atmospheres and distorted guitars accompanied by raspy vocals can pretty much adapt to any musical style, even ones as far removed as one could imagine such as post-rock and shoegaze.

SUNBATHER delivered an hour’s worth of 7 tracks that are for the most part compositionally speaking totally in the world of post-rock with long cyclical melodic loops ratcheting up the tension until melodic crescendoes break loose along with totally metal-free post-rock moments of ambient atmospheres. DEAFHAVEN simply added the bombast of incessantly fast-tempo guitar furor, blastbeat percussion and screamo inspired raspy vocals that added a monstrosity of an addition to the classic post-rock and shoegaze stylistic approach. Given the popularity of both black metal and post-rock in the 1990s, it really was only a matter of time before the two would converge. SUNBATHER indeed is an odd beast even when listening to it today, 11 years after its initial release. The mix of My Bloody Valentine inspired hazy shoegaze juxtaposed with post-rock musical flow and the most intense black metal elements possible is really quite alarming.

While the debate still continues whether this was a good thing or not, the fact is many fans love it while many do not. As far as i’m concerned i’m not against the idea of the whole blackened post-rock-gaze thing in the least bit. But what gets me is that most blackgaze uses the same mix of lazy post-rock rhythms amplified by black metal extremities and shrouded with thick atmospheric turbulence with the overuse of screamo vocal screams. The word blackgaze should allow for a vast palette of interpretations of how these sounds go together and that’s where i have my biggest problem with SUNBATHER and DEAFHAVEN in general.

While the music itself is original in how things are blended together, i find the execution is what’s lacking and i’ve given this album a good decade to let sink in hoping one day it would click but every time i give it a spin i’m plagued by the same dislike of how it was all laid out. First of all the vocals are too much of a one-trick pony and George Clarke offers no diversity in his screaming style which ultimately makes the heavy tracks sound way too similar for their own good. Sure the electronic weirdness in tracks like “Please Remember” are a nice break from the incessant bombast but these are vocal-free zones. This track also features a spoken word appearance from Alcest’s Neige. Likewise the black metal is always on rampage mode. It’s either balls to the wall stampeding into the thralls of war or it’s total chill time. No in between zones, no nuances just off and on. Likewise the penultimate track “Windows” that offers one of the few non-screamed vocal segments provides an interesting dark ambient side track but a ridiculously lame dialog about Biblical scripture.

So there you have it. Blackgaze as a style works for me but really only in a different context with bands like Sadness, Woods of Desolation and White Ward offering much more interesting interpretations. While considered one of the top dogs of the world of blackgaze, SUNBATHER just doesn’t do it for me. It’s not that the album is a bad one by any means, it just doesn’t deliver what all the hype portends and i always feel totally disappointed in its limitations. So in effect i’m neither a DEAFHAVEN fan nor am i a hater. I mostly find myself just indifferent and honestly dislike a lot of screamo type vocals especially in the context of metal. It’s an OK album and one of San Francisco’s more famous contributions in the 21st century but honestly for experimental San Francisco black metal acts, i by far prefer the likes of Weakling, Leviathan or Lurker of Chalice. The aimlessness of SUNBATHER just seems to rub me the wrong way every time. A good once in a while break from things but not an album i really consider essential.