That Deafheaven record is just a really amazing record, imo. I wrote about it here a while back and I sincerely stand by every word. It is very hard, however, to make a serious argument for it being "metal" in any meaningful capacity. By comparison, Sadness did this song called "Blue," which came out in October 2021, that made me think: OK so THIS is what an actual "metal" Infinite Granite would sound like. (This is one of Sadness' least-metal songs, and Sadness is not exactly Deicide to begin with, and it is a thousand times more metal than even "Mombasa," which is the only actual half-metal song on Infinite Granite.) I really don't wanna compare two artists who I love, and I'm not in any way coming for Deafheaven, I'm just saying, for me, this song really hammered home how far away from metal Deafheaven have drifted, and how high the bar has already been raised. And if you don't give a shit about any of that, you should just listen because it's a fucking unreal song by the dude who's running the game right now.
https://youtu.be/z73W7iuhEHQ
I also should add that, based on what I know about him (which is, like, a decent-enough amount), I feel pretty confident saying that he's not intentionally trying to build any sort of mystery or anything. This is just how he writes, records, and releases music, and if you spend enough time with it, you get a feel for what he's doing. And I think that if he tried to do it any differently, something vital might get lost. I guess my point is, I'm about 100% certain he's not trying to fuck with people's heads, he's just different from everybody else, and that's why his music feels different from everything else.
I think he's cataloging April Sunset as an LP but in general his distinctions in that regard aren't particularly clear. It's just one of the things I love about him, just this additional random, unnecessary layer of confusion. I really don't like focusing too hard on that stuff though (even though I guess my blurb above leans into it a bit) because I really, purely LOVE the music. I love the music so much. It's just hard to talk about him without talking about the other stuff. I dunno, I really love all of it so much, honestly.
And @antigone, agreed, I guess the only way I WOULDN'T advise anyone to do it would be to start at the beginning and work forward from there, because I think that would be kinda boring for a bunch of reasons, but who knows? Maybe that's good too! And I'm not even sure the release chronology of those things accurately reflects when they were written and/or recorded (I'm pretty sure it doesn't), so even if one were to approach it that way, they'd nonetheless get lost soon enough.
This is a perfect perfect PERFECT album. It's far and away the best thing Drugs have ever done, and believe me, I'm a pretty huge fan of the last two! Ryan, amazing review, dude. Amazing. Thanks for this.
Fwiw my list looks like this:
1. SOTS (obviously, easily)
2. take-your-pick Flamesies (I super-love Clayman but everyone else goes Jester. Idgaf they're obviously #2.)
3. Be'lly - BnB
4. Hatebreeder
5-infinity. Other stuff.
Again, this is after a very exacting and excruciating (and pointless) deep dive into the ocean of mdm. I'm confident Be'lakor are no lower than #3. And they're probably a contender for #2 if I could get past my eternal and sometimes-questionable love for In Flames. Be'lakor are REALLY fucking good.
Dude seriously thank you so fucking much. I'm incredibly, outrageously happy to be doing this thing again with my bros. Like ... very very happy. Anywho, you should ABSOLUTELY get into Be'lakor (everyone should), but I'd start with Of Breath And Bone (2012) before digging into Coherence. I mean, you TRULY can't go wrong, but Breath And Bone is one of my top 3 albums in the mdm genre and I've listened to every single one (seriously). Be'lakor are a way higher-level band. I hope this record lifts them to the level they deserve, and more importantly, I hope you enjoy!
Four since 9/9 if you count the Ataraxy split, which includes one of his best new songs ("Be Happy"). Gonna go out on a limb and say there will be at least one more in November ("On A Green" full-length, next week I think). I'd be pretty happy with any one of "April Sunset," "On A Green," or "Rain Chamber" as my AOTY right now. That's an UNREAL run. That is a MAGIC run. Anybody who's not on Sadness right now is missing something special. Anyway, the album came out too late to include it in this month's column. Not to worry. November coming fire.
You are insane. And this is coming from the guy who wrote about MØL in the column on which you are commenting. JORD is not better than Sunbather. Go back and listen to Sunbather. I'm not even trying to make a point here, and I'm definitely not trying to make you love MØL any less. I just think you'll be blown away by how good Sunbather is. It's WAY better than you remember. MØL do fucking rule though. ❤
Nah, I was thinking of Of Breath And Bone (2012). I thought Vessels predated that one. Start with "Abeyance" and dig in from there. It's just the best melodeath outside ATG and early In Flames imo. Really beautifully written and produced but all-in on the stuff that matters, i.e., guitars. You will fucking dig it, I promise.
There's actually a band from Indonesia called June Sky who named themselves after that particular song. As it happens, they just put out their first album a week or so ago, but earlier this year they did a split with this other band called A Rose Dying In The Rain (from Mexico) and the whole thing sounds like a Sadness tribute record. I think it's fucking badass that Sadness are like the sole inspiration for this little underground subset of artists, and personally I welcome it because Sadness is my favorite and I wish more artists would approach making music the way he does. Having said that, these bands are not as good as Sadness (obviously).
https://junesky.bandcamp.com/album/melancholy-days
Wait also did you guys not include the new Be'lakor? Or did I miss it? New Be'lakor! Isn't this a huge deal for everyone?? Their last album was a legit no-doubt masterpiece and I'm pretty sure I was editing Invisible Oranges when it came out, so it was a long fucking time ago! Anyway the new song kills. It's as if melodeath were, like, a respected art form. Just unstoppable riffs and hooks. (If you guys did already write about this one, please delete this comment and accept my apologies. )
https://youtu.be/pYZQVgL84rA
Sadness released another song this past month (as part of a split) called "Be Happy" and I would say it's an absolute fucking monster. The melody in the closing section is sort of a mirror version of the one in "A Capture And Pink Dream Moment Spike."
https://youtu.be/6qt5JDtCwOs
And you hear it again in yet another different form in Damian's Life song "You're The Most Precious."
https://youtu.be/h6kwOfiRuOc
It probably half-appears in like four or five other songs, too, but navigating that maze is like trying to remember a dream. In any case, "A Capture And Pink Dream Moment Spike" is probably my favorite song so far (or at least tied with "I Want To Be With You"), which is pretty high praise because there are what feels like a thousand songs and they're all incredible.
Obviously I take issue with a buncha stuff you're saying about Infinite Granite, but I'm not looking to get into a point-counterpoint-countercounterpoint thing, and anyway, I'm mostly just glad you're offering a contrary take so people reading this here will approach the album with that in mind, too, and not feel like they're crazy if they don't like it (or feel like I'm crazy for liking it so much). I dunno if I'm "right," I just know that I listened to the album a lot and this is how I felt about it, and how it made me feel.
I'm actually replying to this comment, though, to tell you that my initial faint-praise take on Shelter didn't stand the test of time. Seven (?) years later, it's maybe my second-favorite Alcest album, and I'm certain that my absolute favorite Alcest album (Spiritual Instinct) wouldn't have been possible if Neige hadn't made Shelter first. I fucking love Shelter. I just fucking love it. Weird, right? Time has a funny way of changing our response to art (and everything else). Maybe you'll return to Infinite Granite someday and hear in it what I hear now. Maybe I'll come back and be unable to hear it anymore. Who knows. All we can say for sure is, we will both be older and the art will remain exactly as it has always been.
Haha OK so I realized this after I was done writing but ... there's actually a dual-guitar lead on "Lament For Wasps" that sounds pretty Maiden-esque. (Comes in right around the 3:40 mark, for those who plan to keep an ear out for it.) I very confidently stand by the original statement, but ... like, it's not NOT in there.
I'm glad you made that playlist! I was hoping someone would.
FWIW I wasn't trying to shade any of those bands. I 100% ride for all those songs and am so stoked to have them in my life, and I will absolutely follow all those bands until they give me some reason not to. I can't decide if it's accurate to call them "wannabes." On one hand, it maybe reduces them to something less than artists, and I wouldn't wanna do that, because they're all definitely artists, and I really like their art! On the other hand, at least one of those song titles is a direct reference to a Deafheaven song title, and another is, I can only assume, a reference to the fact that Deafheaven like My Bloody Valentine, because that song doesn't sound anything like My Bloody Valentine. Anyway, all bangers IMO.
You could probably throw the new MØL song on that playlist, too. I didn't include it because it has a clean-vocal section, so it fell short of my rubric of sounding LITERALLY EXACTLY like old Deafheaven, but still: It sounds basically exactly like old Deafheaven with a tacked-on clean-vocal section. I'm stoked for that record tho!
This actually dawned on me after I'd submitted the review, and I considered emailing Chris to change it, but I liked the way it sounded, and I figured, who will even notice? And if someone actually WERE to notice, I could just tell them what happened, which was: This actually dawned on me after I'd submitted the review ...
You're absolutely right. I have no idea how those decisions are made within the band's ranks, and I made an assumption based upon what I know of other bands whose formations and subsequent evolutions have resembled that of Deafheaven. I intended to neither offend nor mislead, and to the extent I have done either or both of those things, I sincerely apologize.
Hey all, as I type these words, there are like 38 comments below this one, but I figured I'd jump in here to thank @thiscity and everybody else for the truly kind words shared in the comments so far. This is legitimately the best community on the internet, not that you need me to tell you that. Love you all. (Except for all you snarky troll types who will inevitably roll in at some point past the 38-comment mark! Haha. Jk. Of course I love you, too.) ❤
I've also never listened to 30 Seconds To Mars, but there is NO WAY they sound like this.
Real Schrödinger's cat situation here, but wouldn't it be weird if this sounds exactly like 30 Seconds To Mars?
Haha, nah, no tea (and no shade either). I only listened once via YouTube through my phone's speakers so anything I'd actually say atm wouldn't be worth much. That was just my knee-jerk reaction to what I'd heard. I gotta listen more, and I will!
To be fair, I listened to it twice this AM so it must work for me on some level, too, I just couldn't help thinking that George is, at best, redundant here, and at worst, he's holding Kerry back from really going somewhere special. (I've only heard this song so for all I know the rest of the album is incredible.) I remember a Q&A Kerry did before New Bermuda came out where he talked about some of his influences for that record: Oasis, Red House Painters, Low, Wilco. And you could absolutely hear every single one of those bands in that album, if you knew what you were looking for. In theory, moving toward a more traditionally melodic sound should have given him MORE room to explore that side of his art. But those bands have really dynamic vocalists and not coincidentally big three-dimensional sounds whereas to me this feels more one-dimensional than New Bermuda (and not by a little bit). Anyway it doesn't matter, obviously, I wasn't trying to hate or anything, I just heard the song earlier, wanted to swing by here to see what you guys thought of it, and figured I'd pop my head up to let y'all know what I thought! Love u guys. ❤
If Kerry wants to go in this direction, then he'd really be better off doing so without George. It's not that the vocals are bad, but they are so generic. Like, maybe he's not that much worse than Neil Halstead, for example, but Neil writes or co-writes Slowdive's songs AND he produces their records AND he plays guitar AND keyboards AND he shares vocal duties with Rachel Goswell (and she does a bunch of shit besides sing, too). George just sings. And also, Neil kinda originated that style, while George is pretty much just doing an imitation of it. I genuinely don't believe that any one of the four other guys in this band couldn't have sung this vocal track, given the layers of effects he's singing through. This track sounds to me like an "homage" to Alcest (post-Shelter), but Neige's melodic voice has so many more textures and so much more range, and he navigates the shifts from quiet to loud way more deftly. (And by the way, Neige does EVERYTHING in Alcest.) The worst part is, Kerry's playing and writing feel noticeably less dynamic. Like, aside from a couple little signature moves, this could be just about anybody playing guitar, and the overall structure itself is not really something worthy of this songwriter. If he's simplifying his approach to suit George's vocal limitations, then he's not doing anybody any favors. (Even if he's just simplifying his approach, he still could have written a more memorable song.) Of course, there are a whole bunch of meaningful reasons why those two work together, and I'm glad they do, I just feel like this doesn't play to either of their individual strengths or those of Deafheaven as an entity.
Oh also the new site design looks fucking sweet! (I didn’t realize just how new it actually was; if I had, I woulda led with that instead of a UTU2TM reference.) Keep up the great work, gang!
There's an old Bill Graham concert poster that reads: "The Grateful Dead: They're not the best at what they do, they're the only ones who do what they do." I think that's maybe the perfect summation of the Dead. On one hand, they are clearly the best rock band of all time; on the other hand, the things that most obviously elevate them above the field also remove them from the field and leave them on an entirely different planet. They can't be the best rock band of all time if you can't compare them to any other rock bands, right? And for me, Hunter was/is the single most significant factor separating the Dead from the rest of the world. He was an actual poet, in the lineage of poets, with the language of poets, and his words transcended even poetry when given life by Jerry. Hunter's only real peers were Dylan and Joni Mitchell, but Hunter's stuff has always hit me way harder and left me with way more. He's my favorite lyricist ever, and it's not close. Hunter's contributions made even the Dead's weakest material essential and their strongest material infinite, incomparable, divine. Wherever Hunter is now, Jerry is there, too, and they're once again a single entity. The epitaph on Pig Pen's headstone should absolutely be carved into Hunter's, too: He "was and is now forever one of the Grateful Dead."
Aw, thanks doodz. I didn't know Ryan was gonna write this super-nice note on Friday, and if I had known, I wouldn't have waited till fucking SUNDAY to respond. Anywho, I'm truly, TRULY humbled by y'all's kind words, not just here but in every damn story I ever wrote for this site. Stereogum is the best, and Stereogum readers are the best, and that is 100% a causal relationship. I'm so fucking proud to be a part of it. As a token of my eternal love and appreciation, please enjoy Kevin Baekkel's new video part: some of the gnarliest skating I have seen in a long while, soundtracked by Darkthrone's "Fucked Up And Ready To Die." ❤
https://youtu.be/tkS4wBONPZo
I missed it (I was outta town the weekend they did TWO shows at a venue that's walking distance from my house) and I second this: DO NOT MISS IT. I keep seeing video clips in my Facebook feed or wherever and it makes me want to fucking cry. Objectively and empirically the best live show/experience on Earth.
I mean, if you compare their catalogs side by side, it's not close, Kreator wipes the floor with Destruction. But "Mad Butcher" is a fucking GREAT song.
You know, this is kinda important, I forgot to mention Kreator, who are one of my ALL-FUCKING-TIME favorites since Extreme Aggression, and that's a pretty glaring omission here. There is SO MUCH Kreator in ATG, maybe more than any other influence tbh. So anyway, when I first heard Slaughter Of The Soul, I felt like I was listening to this amazing combination of Kreator, Entombed, and Maiden, and it blew my mind, I felt like they had unlocked the secret formula for perfect music (fucking Swedes always do this). It just sounded like magic to me. And it still does!
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