Deafheaven are one of heavy music’s most unique forces of nature.
Founded by vocalist George Clarke and guitarist Kerry McCoy in 2010, the band rose to prominence by blurring the boundaries between bleak-blooded black-metal and the effects-swirled atmospherics of shoegaze. Over the past 15 years and across five full-length albums (with a sixth on the way), Deafheaven have simultaneously baffled genre purists and become a beloved metal institution. While 2013 sophomore album Sunbather was the first to truly burn itself into our collective consciousness, they remain a beacon of fusion-centric heaviness.
But what stands out as the blackgaze band’s most revolutionary anthem? We asked Revolver readers to pick their favorites, and here are the top five vote-getters.
“Gifts for the Earth”
Deafheaven have bestowed many great gifts upon us over the years, notably including this kinda emo-rocking finale to 2015’s New Bermuda.
“Gifts for the Earth” is chiefly built around a driving arrangement of low-distortion chords and yearning guitar leads. A chipper, jangling tambourine brings a different kind of energy to Deafheaven’s typically bleak oeuvre, at least until teary-eyed octave trills take over mid-song. But then again, the whole thing fades out with a super-hopeful sounding piano-and-acoustic-guitar motif.
“Canary Yellow”
When Revolver first reviewed Deafheaven’s 2018 full-length, Ordinary Corrupt Human Love, we noted that the genre-crossing group’s then-latest album needed to be judged on “its merits rather than how well it might fit into some basement-dwelling titty-baby’s idea of black metal.”
When it comes to “Canary Yellow,” a masterfully boundary-less composition beloved by many Revolver readers, that means that the band may still hurtle at you with reckless, black-metal abandon, but the tune is likewise home to clean-channel-and-blues-broken walkdown riffs, classic-rock soloing, and a gang-vocal finale that kinda comes across like a hipster-metal take on “Another Brick in the Wall (Pt. 2).”
In other words, they colored things with the full pack of Crayola, not just a titular shade of canary yellow.
“Sunbather”
A dozen years on and heaps of praise later, it’s hard to remember how bizarre and even controversial Deafheaven’s Sunbather album was when it first saw release.
Take its title track, a lengthy epic that peppers black-metal blasting and piercing shrieks with a garden grove of shoegazing effects and tonebar uneasiness more akin to a My Bloody Valentine song. Its lyrics hint at wealth-disparity, Clarke’s voyeuristic creeper wandering into a strange but affluent neighborhood to drink in the sight of the titular sunbather.
Is it “trve kvlt”? Hell no, but it’s one of the richest and earliest displays of Deafheaven firing on all cylinders.
“Baby Blue”
Clarke and McCoy were stressed and sleep-deprived in the lead-up to New Bermuda — the former confirming as much to Revolver in 2015, noting how he and his collaborator were constantly disturbed by a series of “stress dreams” around the making of the album.
While New Bermuda standout “Baby Blue” initially finds Deafheaven riding a cerulean wave of chilled-out guitar effects, Clarke eventually soaks listeners in his anxiety by screaming about being attacked by his subconscious and forever waking in a pool of sweat. The tune likewise submerges you in wild and crazy wah-wah guitar solos, crunching riff heaviness and a musique-concrète-style sample of a traffic report.
“Dreamhouse”
At one point or another, we all desire something we cannot have. That’s one of the universal feelings Clarke taps into with Sunbather’s unendingly gorgeous and unquestionably fierce “Dreamhouse,” a nine-minute epic the singer said was in part inspired by wandering the streets of San Francisco and obsessing over fancy homes.
Considering it tees off one of the 2010’s most resonant and revered metal albums, you could argue also argue “Dreamhouse” laid the foundation for what we love about Deafheaven: melancholic, effects-glazed melodies that tear at your soul, blisteringly chaotic blasts, Clarke’s intense, heart-heavy shrieks.
Above all, per Revolver readers, this Deafheaven masterpiece was built to last.