166. Deafheaven
Koko
21 April 2017
I have said it before and I will say it again: a Deafheaven gig isn’t just loud, it’s biblical. This is a band that doesn’t so much perform as summon. Until now, I’d always gone alone to witness this sonic exorcism, but this time, I needed a witness. Someone else to share in this force of nature. Time to strongarm one of my best mates into this.
He’d made his reservations clear, the whole “black-metal-shoegaze-screaming-into-the-void” thing wasn’t really his bag. Fair. It wasn’t mine either, once upon a time. But Deafheaven aren’t really a band. They’re a weather event.
So it was that we strolled into KOKO on a crisp April evening, two innocents about to get sonically power washed. My mate probably expected what most civilians do from this sort of gig: big guitars, lots of shouting, maybe a bit of nihilism.
What we got was something entirely different: a semi-religious experience conducted at aircraft-engine volume by five men who appeared to have made a pact with the gods of distortion.
From the first shimmering chord, the air turned electric. Deafheaven don’t ease you in; they pick you up and throw you into the heart of the storm.
Frontman George Clarke stalked the stage like a preacher, equal parts elegance and mania, shrieking salvation through a wall of light and noise while the rest of the band sculpted chaos into something that somehow felt beautiful, despite it hitting you like a freight train.
Beneath all that black-metal roar and shoegaze shimmer is something oddly transcendent. It’s catharsis. It’s communion. George Clarke is the only person I’ve ever seen who can make a death growl feel like a baptism.
When they played “Dream House”, the crowd ascended as one. Eyes closed. Arms aloft. Between songs, Clarke would pause, smile sweetly, and thank the crowd in his polite Californian accent, a disarming contrast to the banshee shriek he’d unleashed seconds before. Deafheaven make beauty out of brutality and poetry out of volume. They aren’t a band. They’re a cleansing ritual.