A very well informed list by Brandon Stosuy of his Top 40 Metal albums of 2013 with both Russian Circles and Deafheaven included. See the FULL LIST HERE
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#pitchfork #top 40 metal albums #brandon stosuy #deafheaven #russian circles
Excerpt // An interview with Deafheaven’s George Clarke
San Francisco “post black metal” quintet Deafheaven was founded as a duo in 2010 by George Clarke and Kerry McCoy. (The two had played together previously in a grindcore band.) In 2011, they released their debut LP Roads to Judah on Converge frontman Jacob Bannon’s label, Deathwish Inc., and followed it with a live album, DW Live Series 08: Live at the Blacktop. Clarke’s said that Roads to Judah– the title references the “N Judah” Muni Metro line in San Francisco– deals with a year of substance abuse, and a sense of regret and elation comes through in the collection’s four gorgeously extended, intense songs that blend West Coast black metal, Explosions in the Sky dynamics, and a healthy My Bloody Valentine infatuation. I went back and forth with Clarke via email.
Pitchfork: I played a song of yours at a recent metal night and a few people came up, asked what it was, and were surprised when I said Deafheaven. Metal, as a scene, is full of these sorts of biases– why do you think Deafheaven gets the “hipster metal” tag?
George Clarke: Sometimes, the metal scene’s sense of unity can give way to close mindedness and prejudice. We don’t subscribe to a cookie-cutter mold of what extreme music should look like, so we’re ridiculed for it. It’s unfortunate that there’s safety in anonymity in the metal scene. When Deafheaven first began, we didn’t release any photos of ourselves for fear of an inevitable backlash. So, I’m not surprised when we get called “hipsters” or are thrown the Liturgy comparison. In addition to our music having about a ten percent similarity, their outlook and agenda seems to differ from ours. Ultimately, Deafheaven will continue to do our own thing musically and visually regardless of controversy or alienation.
Brandon Stosuy's Show No Mercy metal column and Wierd Records co-hosted a showcase at this year's Northside Festival at St Vitus Bar in Brooklyn on Friday night. Deafheaven, Indian Jewelry, Vattnet Viskar, and Pinkish Black performed after an opening DJ set by Pieter Wierd.
The New York-based (((unartig))) was on hand and shot video footage of the sets, including these clips of Pinkish Black, Indian Jewelry, Vattnet Viskar, and Deafheaven’s “Exit: Denied” and “Violet”.
Check out a selection of Samantha Marble’s shots after the jump, then head over to our photo slideshow for a complete set of full-size photos.
Photos by Samantha Marble
DON’T MISS DEAFHEAVEN LIVE
They have three shows coming up with Russian Circles, And So I Watch You From Afar & Chelsea Wolfe on the LA Show too.
DEAFHEAVEN SHOWS
June 27th – Sacramento, CA – Harlow’s
June 28th – San Francisco, CA -Great American Music Hall
June 29th – Los Angeles, CA - The El Rey Theater
It’s impressive what Russian Circles can do with a basic guitar, bass, and drum setup. There are plenty of metal-leaning instrumental bands who dial up big climaxes, but you’d be hard-pressed to find one that creates such an array of textures and emotions with so little. Bassist Brian Cook also uses keyboards, and on the Chicago trio’s excellent fifth album, Memorial, they bring in guest cello and violin. But the core, buttressed by imaginative arrangements and strong compositional skills, is strong enough that there would be more than enough chills without these add-ons.
Craft: VOID
Do you know how long we’ve been waiting for this album to finally come out? They’ve been posting teasers about it for a couple of years now–a studio update here, a snippet of a song there. And as with most elusive underground black metal, getting solid information on what was actually going on with the band was damn near impossible. But at least Craft made up for the five year wait after their 2006 masterpiece Fuck The Universe by delivering another solid album of discordant hooks and punishing riffs.
Helms Alee: Weatherhead
The greatest yell in recorded history, in my humble opinion, is that last round of howls to spew out of Black Francis’s muzzle on The Pixies’ “Tame.” It’s a frightful roar on it’s own, but embedded in the song’s loud-quiet-loud structure and set against the feminine sigh of Kim Deal, it becomes all the more ferocious and menacing. Weatherhead employs this tactic across the board, marrying moments of guitar jangle and the ethereal vocals of Dana James and Hozoji Annie Matheson-Margullis with heavy-as-fuck moments of low-end stomp and the imposing bellow of Ben Verellen. It makes the graceful passages even more beguiling and the bouts of volume and distortion even more massive.
Deafheaven: Roads to Judah
I saw Enslaved earlier this year and the singer was cracking jokes in between songs. C'mon man, part of the allure of black metal is the thoroughness of the whole introverted ultra-serious facade. Granted, sometimes it can be a bit much. Can we please stop paying attention to the racist ramblings of Varg Vikernes and ignore that unnecessary “transcendental” manifesto written by the dude from Liturgy? It makes one thankful for a band like Deafheaven, a humorless and imposing Bay Area band so uninterested in extending the theater of misanthropy beyond the confines of the stage that you’d be hard pressed to get anyone in the band to acknowledge their ties to black metal. So yeah, it might not be a band for the true kvlt dudes out there (most of whom are too young to have been listening to music when black metal first made the cover of Kerrang anyways), but for anyone that wants to hear blast beats, washes of tremolo-picked guitars, and harrowing banshee wails without having to deal with either entry-level Paganism and shady political affiliations on one end or fart jokes on the other, Roads to Judah is highly recommended.
I first saw Deafheaven live at SXSW in March 2011, a month before their debut LP Road to Judah’s release. They were part of a Profound Lore showcase at the tiny bar Lovejoys, and while they were clearly a band with good ideas, their ambition was hinted at rather than truly experienced. Still, Judah, especially the brilliant “Violet”, stuck with me, so I booked the band– led by singer George Clarke and guitarist Kerry McCoy– for the following SXSW, and then again last June as part of Show No Mercy’s Northside Showcase, where they delivered an especially compelling set. Each time, Clarke and McCoy– who have been best friends for a decade– were backed by different players, something that didn’t connote stability, but they were clearly getting closer to realizing the huge push and pull of what I’d initially witnessed in sketchier form.
The fact that they continued getting better still didn’t prepare me for their stunning sophomore album, Sunbather, out June 11 on Converge vocalist Jacob Bannon’s Deathwish Inc. label and streaming in its entirely right now via Pitchfork Advance. The collection folds something brighter and more melodic into their approach: something like Explosions in the Sky’s star-melting sweep combined with rabid vocals influenced by Emperor’s 1994 black metal classic, In the Nightside Eclipse. It’s gorgeous, moving music for vast spaces that will go over with fans of metal as well as those who usually stay away from heavier stuff. I spoke with Clarke about it via Skype last week.
Pitchfork: When we talked last year, you said your new music was looking to be “a lot darker” than your previous material. Do you think Sunbather ended up being darker than Roads to Judah?
Pitchfork’s Show No Mercy and Wierd Showcase at Northside Festival 2012
Friday, June 15
Doors at 8pm; $12
St Vitus Bar (1120 Manhattan Ave, between Clay St. and Box St.)
Deafheaven
Indian Jewelry
Vattnet Viskar
Pinkish Black
+ DJ Pieter Wierd
Brandon Stosuy's Show No Mercy metal column is throwing a blowout at ND Studios on Wednesday, March 14. It features Rwake, the Atlas Moth, Black Tusk, Deafheaven, Pallbearer, KEN mode, Pilgrim, and Mutilation Rites, with visual projections by Recspec. The party will be free of charge and open to the public. Below, find full event details, and stay tuned for set times.
The Show No Mercy party joins our official SXSW showcase, which takes place March 15 at Austin’s Central Presbyterian Church and features The-Dream, Fiona Apple, Nicolas Jaar, Grimes, Purity Ring, and Charli XCX.
Pitchfork is happy to announce the third installment of the BasilicaSoundScape festival. It takes place September 12-13 at Basilica Hudson, an arts and performance space inside a reclaimed 19th-century factory located on the waterfront in Hudson, New York.
Performers confirmed include Swans, Deafheaven, Tim Hecker, and Julia Holter. Many more acts (and more than a few surprises) are to be announced.