About a year ago, San Fransisco post-black act Deafheaven released their sophomore album Sunbather, and the world blew the fuck up. The metal press lit up simultaneously with gushing praise for the album and condemnation of the shadowy 'black metal elitist' who would invariably condemn the album as 'untrve', or whatever. Other publications fared no differently, throwing disgusted comments towards the strawman of black metal fans while smugly preaching that enjoying the 'high art' of Sunbather somehow put them on a higher level than greasy long-haired Burzum worshipers. Noisey even penned an entire article whining about how being aware of the band didn't necessarily make you a black metal aficionado - and the author's dismissal of Inquisition cements this.
Since then, Deafheaven shows have drawn a motley, almost comedic crowd. On their most recent tour with Pallbearer, I was praised for my denim vest about as much as thrown a contemptuous glance from some rail-thin, unsmiling Bohemian. In February, when they opened for Between the Buried and Me, the predominantly metalhead crowd spent most of the night unabashedly laughing at George Clarke's bizarre, vaguely sexual stage antics.
Now, this is not a rant about the appropriation of black metal by long-faced American hipsters (who, for what it's worth, write some really cool stuff). This is not a hand-wringing about metal's emasculation and a panegyric to bands like Blasphemy and Midnight. This is not even a condemnation of Deafheaven's music, because Sunbather is, by all accounts, an incredibly well-written and intricate record.
This is a protracted sigh at how everyone got so excited over what, at the end of the day, is post-black's most accessible, least impressive representative. I'll admit that I loved Sunbather, and wholeheartedly joined in the hype the record left in its wake, but as time wore on and I plumbed the depths of the genre, I found myself confronted with an uncomfortable truth: not only was Deafheaven just the tip of the iceberg, but the band are utterly featureless when compared to their compatriots.
Post-black metal has a checkered history, and only really came into its own at the tail end of the 2000s, when Neige of Peste Noire left the xenophobic black metal group to form what would come to be the gold standard in the genre, Alcest. Neige's masterful weaving of bleary-eyed shoegaze with the strident guitarwork and emotional heaviness of black metal was utterly without precedence.
Alcest's 2005 EP Le Secret and 2007 full-length Souvenirs d'Un Autre Monde represented the first successful marriage of black metal with a genre outside the umbrella of heavy metal. Weakling briefly experimented with this formula in the late 90s, but the project vanished after their 2000 debut Dead as Dreams. Alcest approached the genre fusion from the vantage point of wistful shoegaze, but from the fiery, windswept black metal half came Ireland's Altar of Plagues, who pushed atmospheric black metal to its extreme limits by using post-rock's grandiose scale instead of more traditional synthesizers.
Altar of Plagues' choice wasn't as groundbreaking as Alcest's (Agalloch's The Mantle (2001) saw the marriage first explored) but it nevertheless managed to put a new twist on atmospheric black metal. More generally, Altar of Plagues and Alcest were toying with what would become post-black metal.
Both of these groups were well-established before Deafheaven was even a thought, and long before Libertine Dissolves saw the light of day. But when Deafheaven did come around with 2011's Roads to Judah, not only did the record garner mixed reviews, but it became clear the band were content to be a textbook example of post-black metal and not explore either influence any deeper than they had to.
Sunbather continued this trend. The band developed catchier riffs, moved the snare to the back of the mix so the music would be more accessible, and didn't plumb any deeper than they had to into black metal or shoegaze. And everyone went nuts. In many ways, it's understandable. For someone who has never dabbled in black metal, Sunbather provided the perfect starting point, and it's undeniable that the band are excellent songwriters.
Beyond that, however, praise for Sunbather doesn't seem to make much sense. From a post-black context, Deafheaven take no risks. Now, this wouldn't be as much of an issue if the genre's paragons weren't known for doing just that. Altar of Plagues' swansong Teethed Glory and Injury (released, incidentally, the same month as Sunbather) toyed with electronics and steered clear of the safety of expansive atmospherics the band had perfected. Deafheaven's San Fransisco compatriots in Bosse-de-Nage have been slamming black metal into post-hardcore for years now. France's The Great Old Ones subtly insert psychedelics into their Lovecraftian take on the genre.
At the same time, post-black metal is utterly clogged and oversaturated with mediocre Alcest clones, what amounts to DSBM with more synth, and slightly airy black metal. These are the bands that refuse to take risks, blindly following Alcest and succeeding in going nowhere. Sunbather's catchiness and mainstream appeal, however, saved Deafheaven from being delegated to this category.
Beyond the band's musical mediocrity, however, is the reaction Sunbather elicited. While the 'hipster half' of Deafheaven's fanbase was unanimous in its tearful praise, metalheads, as they're wont to do, devolved into bickering over whether the band was metal, whether it was black metal, whether it was a good release, with most of it being fingerpointing at stereotypical black metal 'elitism'. The band, for what it's worth, don't really seem to care what people label them as, but as the debate continues a year and some later, it's thrown into relief that people desperately want Sunbather to be not just a black metal record, but a good black metal record: a modern classic, one that will reinvent the stubborn black metal wheel as much as Rennihilation was supposed to a few years back (aside: has anyone heard anything about Liturgy recently? They still writing manifestos?).
This push makes no sense on multiple levels. Firstly, Sunbather is utterly orthodox both within a black metal and a shoegaze context. It's a mighty beast of a record, to be sure, but the band are impassively rooted in playing frenetic black metal with a reverb pedal. Unless their next release sees them taking a more progressive direction, Sunbather will be Deafheaven's fifteen minutes of fame, and the new trend in black metal will come from another direction (I'm personally hoping for more psychedelic stuff in the vein of Oranssi Pazuzu, but I digress).
Secondly, black metal made by hipsters has never caught on as a trend. As I said before, Liturgy was supposed to be the vanguard for a wave of 'transcendental black metal' bands, but none came. Weakling's transient lifespan failed to trigger much of anything until nearly a decade after their breakup. Even a year after the thunderous success of Sunbather, we have seen precisely zero acts attempting to imitate Deafheaven's style. Modern innovations in black metal are the result of primarily metal fans - Alcest (as said before), Blut Aus Nord, and Nachtmystium spring to mind as some modern visionaries.
This occurs when artists try and put the cart before the horse - that is, having an artistic vision without the musical wherewithal to support it fully. Hunter Hunt-Hendrix's manifesto, George Clarke's tear-jerker on how seeing a sunbather in a wealthy neighborhood inspired him to write Sunbather...all truly beautiful muses, but without the ability to stand on your own two feet musically, you won't get anywhere beyond fifteen minutes of fame.
Lastly, why is there such a conscious need for Deafheaven to fall squarely into a box? Genres are a fluid concept, they act as taxonomical guidelines, not absolute rules to be clung to. Metal, with its various genres and subgenres, has struggled with this issue for years. An artist's genre denomination is zero indicator of anything short of artistic description, and Deafheaven are no different. What's more, innovation in music is an organic event. Fenriz and Varg Vikernes have both sworn that black metal was never supposed to 'become a trend', and were actually chagrined to see it catch on. If Sunbather pioneers anything, as unlikely as I think it to, it won't be because of their fans' clamoring.
In conclusion I'd like to say that my views on Deafheaven's music are as a whole quite positive - I enjoy all of their work, and find their ability to conjure up summer sunshine wonderful. My primary issue with the band isn't the now-hackneyed "NOT TRVE" argument, it's the sheer flood of unending praise the band have faced for the past year. Sunbather was an excellent record, but it is in no way pushing metal in any direction whatsoever.
