"To Dream"

Number Thirty One

Last year there was a heated discussion over what is "metal", and how the genre is bending and changing all the time. This happen mostly due to one album, put out by a San Francisco black metal band. Their little album blew up and caused a whole lot of ruckus and gained an insane amount of press, eventually even ending up in an Apple ad for the newest iPhone (5S, for those curious).

This band is Deafheaven. Their 2013 album "Sunbather" was one of the most hyped and also the most debated albums in the underground music scene. Deafheaven combined elements of rock, post-rock, post-metal, black metal, thrash, even shoegaze to make a cohesive, pummeling and weirdly uplifting experience. The instrumentation is heavy but also very light, not unlike something you'd hear The Airborne Toxic Event or maybe La Dispute putting out.

The vocals threw people a bit. Even people who weren't usually fans of metal could appreciate the instrumental aspect of Deafheaven but the wretched vocals split the fanbase in half. The lyrics are, in true black metal fashion, unrelentingly depressing. Deafheaven tweaks this a bit though, adding some more uplifting lyrics in too.

I personally love most of Deafheaven's output. Some of the lighter tracks I'm not huge on, especially the purely instrumental ones, but the crushing and fantastic "Dream House" was one of my favorite tracks last year. The last four lines of this nine-minute song are... Well, you'll see.

Links to "Sunbather" in full and some older songs as well as their bandcamp below.

Deafheaven - Violet
Deafheaven - Sunbather (Full Album)
Deafheaven - Unrequited
Deafheaven's bandcamp

Favorite song: Dream House
Related artists: And So I Watch You From Afar, Miroist