98. Deafheaven
Scala
24 August 2015
None of my usual gig companions have ever quite grasped my unwavering devotion to Deafheaven. To them, the idea of combining the bleak, guttural rage of black metal with the shimmering sonics of shoegaze is about as sensible as putting wasabi on a croissant. And yet, in 2013, this band did just that and birthed Sunbather, an album so ferociously beautiful and violently tender that it felt like being punched in the soul.
I came to this gig at the Scala mildly obsessed with this band and this record. Sunbather had lived on my turntable, each spin revealing new textures of anguish, beauty, and despair. At the time, it was a divisive record, praised and pilloried in equal measure, with certain corners of the metal community clutching their studded pearls over its pink album cover and post-rock interludes. But the years have been kind. Sunbather now sits comfortably in the modern rock pantheon, a jagged masterpiece that seems to have only sharpened with age.
What made it all the more remarkable was the story behind it. Two bandmates, circling rock bottom, high, broke, with barely enough money for gas. One of them watching, hollow-eyed, from a beat-up car as a suburban girl in a swimsuit lay out in the sunshine.
The album’s title came from that moment: a flash of privilege and ease that felt like a cosmic joke. Sunbather isn’t just music, it’s a document of that bitterness, that claustrophobia, that “how did we get here” malaise wrapped in sonic napalm. One moment it’s soaring post-rock vistas, the next it’s a banshee shriek from the depths of an existential sinkhole. And just when you think you’ve adjusted, it lulls you into a melodic reverie, before sucker-punching you again with unfiltered grief.
The Scala gig was everything the record promised: cathartic, pulverising, deeply uncomfortable and utterly mesmerising. The venue, with its peeling paint and gladiatorial floor plan, felt like the perfect arena for this kind of ritualised emotional bloodletting. Clarke didn’t so much perform as exorcise, prowling the stage in black, eyes wild, hands curled into claws. At one-point, mid-song, he seemed to levitate; feet off the ground, back arched, scream pointed to the ceiling as if summoning some terrible angel.
Around me, the crowd responded in kind. This wasn’t just moshing; this was communion. People screamed back lyrics they couldn’t possibly understand, and it didn’t matter. The emotion was raw and universal. Regret. Despair. The odd glimmer of fragile hope. There were moments of melodic clarity where time seemed to slow and then the double kick drums would start up again like incoming artillery and we were back in the eye of the storm.
By the time they reached their encore of “Dream House”, we were emotionally spent, sweat-soaked, hoarse, and changed. Deafheaven don’t make music to be liked. They make music to feel. To endure. Sunbather is a scream into the void that somehow found an audience. And that night, in that packed sweatbox of a venue, we screamed back and for a few furious, transcendent minutes, the void screamed back at us.