Deafheaven at Basilica Soundscape 2014

Truthfully, I’m not much of a metal guy. If you frequent this blog, that won’t come as a surprise. But I’ve heard nothing but glowing praise from mostly everyone I could think of about black metal band Deafheaven, even from the sort of people who don’t normally have anything to say about metal at all. Last night I got to see the perform at Basilica Soundscape and see what all the talk was about.

While on the surface, Deafheaven would be described as metal. The chugging, heavy-hitting riffs and intense persona and wallowing screams of frontman/singer George Clarke are certainly there. Even if its not your thing, there’s something different about these guys. They create these haunting, harrowingly powerful riffs that have this cathartic feeling to them. The best way I could describe it to someone is imagine a heavy metal version of Explosions In The Sky. His screams are more so another layer to their instrumental puzzle than anything else.

On stage, Clarke is an engaging frontman, begging for fans to engage with him, holding their hands, signaling for them to come closer (to the dismay of the security guards), and even jumping into the crowd for a quick but memorable crowd-surfing session. While he plays the part of the showman, the rest of the group maintains the fort, chugging away on heavy-hitting sounds that are equal part shoe-gazy as they are death metal. The crowd ate it up, shoving into each other and giving in to their sounds, finding their own version of release. That’s the beauty of music, it affects all of us differently, but as long as it affects us in some way, it’s doing the job.