126. Deafheaven

Heaven

14 March 2016

There are good gigs, there are great gigs, and then there are the nights where you find yourself wedged under the arches of Charing Cross, sweat dripping from the ceiling, watching a band bleed their souls out in front of you. This was one of those nights, a top ten, no-argument, sort of gig.

The singer stands at the lip of the stage, one boot planted firmly on the monitor, surveying the crowd like he’s about to pass judgement. The low-level chatter, the shouted drinks orders, the obligatory phone jockeying, they all fizzle away. He’s got us. All of us.

A single guitar line cuts through the air, delicate, haunting. The sort of riff that makes even the bored girlfriends of the metalheads stop scrolling and look up. And then… he detonates. A roar from somewhere deep in his ribcage tears the room in two. The words not just screamed noise, but actual poetry, drag us through addiction, ruin, the ugly beauty of self-destruction, the knife’s edge of last chances. Every syllable sounds like it’s been ripped from the lining of his lungs.

By the time we hit the last song, the air is thick. Guitars soar like they’re trying to claw their way out of the venue’s brickwork; the vocals pin you to the spot. The frontman sags mid-phrase, knees buckling, before collapsing outright. He’s given us every atom he has left.

Kerry, the guitarist, the one the singer pulled back from the brink of a prescription pill habit, gently unstraps his own instrument. The finger plate and strings are streaked with blood. He doesn’t bother wiping it off. He just stoops, hauls his friend to his feet, and the two of them stand there for a moment, hollow-eyed and utterly spent.

The audience collectively exhales for the first time all night. It’s not applause, not yet. More like relief. Because what we’ve just seen wasn’t a set list. It was survival.

You don’t often witness a band play like their lives depend on it, mainly because most of the time, they don’t. But these ones? Not so long ago, they did. And it shows.

If they come within fifty miles of you, don’t think. Don’t weigh it up. Just go.