Year Of Metal #007: Deafheaven - Sunbather
When Sunbather dropped in 2013, it was the first metal album in a while that seemed to be embraced by - if not marketed directly to - the indie set. I can remember listening to it and liking it, but not coming back to it for a while. When I did revisit it a few years later, it wasn’t for me - while I could appreciate the lush textures and ambitions, the sheer volume, almost from word go, put me off.
The important part is: it’s really not a record to listen to on headphones. Opener “Dream House”, in particular, is a brutal experience. Aside from George Clarke’s scything vocals, there are long passages of machine gun drums, pushing full minutes of the track beyond the limits of comfort. Play it in the right mood and on the right speaker, though, and it’s a magnificent sound. The shoegaze-black metal hybrid makes for a beautifully discomforting experience, something so pretty and yet so harsh.
There are gentler moments across the record, like the beautiful instrumental “Irresistible”. With something of a midwest emo soundscape, they take the pace down by omitting not just the screaming but the drums, too. As nice as this stuff is, you’re here mostly for the sprawling, colossal metal. The title track ups the ante further by swapping out the twinkling guitars for pummelling ones - it’s an ordeal, but adds to the massiveness that’s key to the record.
Particularly interesting is “Vertigo”, an outlier specifically because it falls into neither the “blackgaze” of the album’s heavy peaks nor the pastoral or ambient beauty of its cool down moments. Instead, here we just get the band ripping it up, with blistering solos that could easily have fit onto a much less peculiar work. It’s the true epic centrepiece of the album, roaring for 10 minutes, cooling off for four or so, then rousing itself back for a final attack. The lurching, looping finale is the emotional high point of Sunbather - after going full on for such a long time, they finally sound spent.
It’s an experimental album, for sure. The ominous, droning “Windows” plays dual audio clips of a street preacher and guitarist Kerry McCoy carrying out an increasingly desperate drug deal. The vision, then, is pretty extraordinary, to hang all of this together across one hour (and as a side note, it’s a rare case of a metal LP with an absolutely beautiful cover). No wonder this thing has garnered so much acclaim; it sounds like little else, and the work is so complete that it’s pretty damn hard to copy.
