There are times I really like everything I hear by them and times I canāt be bothered with them.
I saw them at St Lukeās in Glasgow when the sun was hitting the stained glass windows and it looked and sounded immense. I also saw them in The Classic Grand and they werenāt as good.
Burmuda is probably my favourite of their albums. I like the Kirk Hammet guitar solo on Baby Blue.
I fell hard for the Black Metal revivial/reinvention from about 12ish years ago. A lot of records from that era are now all timers for me, from The Body to Liturgy, Alcest to Cobalt: thereās so much āUSBMā or melodic Black metal or blackgaze of whatever that really sank under my skin and made me grin just as much as it irritated these true Kvlt purists who sprang out of the woodwork at the time.
I saw Deafheaven quite low down a stacked bill in Brighton that included Circle Takes the Square, Kylesa and KEN Mode. I was not impressed. Instrumentally they were tight but the frontman came across as an utter knob: confrontational staring into the crowd, posing with the mic stand, Ian-Curtis-rip-off look. The music was good but not enough to detract from him.
Fast forward to āSunbatherā and a large chunk of the world went mad for it and I just didnāt get it. I wanted to like it; I was genuinely prepared to give it a go despite my gig experience but it left me utterly cold. It was very very competent but nothing left an impression. I was baffled by the love and wrote them off as not for me.
I donāt know why I even bothered listening to āOrdinary Corrupt Human Loveā after all that but I did andā¦ I loved it! What a brilliant record. Thereās much more of a sense of the music breathing, them having fun with it, being playful (and cheesy in places!) but it sticks in the brain in the way that the more calculated and tasteful āSunbatherā just didnāt.
Then comes āGraniteā which I like but donāt quite love. Itās great to have a Deafheaven album you can put on in the car with your scream-hating wife but it isnāt quite bold enough to really be an all timer for me.
3.5 rounded up to a 4 for surprising me when I had written them off.
Excellent band. Sunbather is still my favourite album of theirs, but Iāve enjoyed everything else since. I really liked their last record, I played Great Mass of Color obsessively last year
The title track off Sunbather is just so so good, the big wall of guitars just sound incredible on this