Deafheaven
– Sunbather
There’s a very specific kind of sound that feels like your skin’s being peeled off by sunlight—warm, yes, but violent too. Sunbather is that. Deafheaven took black metal’s shrieks and blast beats and aimed them straight at heaven, letting them burn in slow-motion post-rock crescendos and shoegaze haze. It’s not about genre fusion—it’s about obliterating the walls between genres until only intensity remains.
Best of…
George Clarke doesn’t sing as much as he exorcises. His vocals are buried in the mix like a trapped soul, howling through layers of distortion and beauty. Kerry McCoy, meanwhile, turns tremolo picking into a kind of radiant hypnosis, more My Bloody Valentine than Mayhem. And the rhythm section? Like a machine breaking down gracefully—chaotic, human, staggering but unstoppable.
There’s tension here, but not in the usual metal sense. Sunbather doesn’t build toward destruction. It climbs for the light and realizes halfway up that the sun burns. It’s longing and collapse. It’s noise that feels like redemption. For a certain kind of listener, it’s a revelation. For others, it’s an endurance test soaked in pink noise. Either way, it doesn’t care. It just keeps ascending.
Choice Tracks
Dream House
Opens the album like an explosion of light. It’s relentless but strangely hopeful, like sprinting toward something you’re not sure exists. Clarke screams as if his body is giving out, and somehow it sounds liberating.
Sunbather
A suite of grandeur and unease. The title track rides a wave of shimmering guitars while the vocals claw at some unreachable truth. It’s beautiful and ugly all at once—like memories you wish you could unfeel.
Please Remember
This one’s more of a breather, but no less emotionally loaded. An ambient interlude with a spoken-word sample and distant guitar echoes. Feels like coming down from a panic attack in a sunlit room.
Vertigo
Takes its time. Almost meditative at first, before boiling into a squall. The contrast between restraint and release is brutal. It hurts, in a good way.
The Pecan Tree
The closer, and it hits like grief delayed. McCoy’s guitars shimmer like glass about to crack, and Clarke’s vocals are nearly drowned out—as if he’s been swallowed by everything he’s been fighting. Ends not with triumph, but with surrender.