Album Review: Ordinary Corrupt Human Love by Deafheaven

Listen and subscribe via iTunes | Google Play | Stitcher | RSS The Lowdown: Deafheaven return for their fourth album, which strips away the shoegaze of Sunbather and the dark atmosphere of New Bermuda for a bright and sunny, new sound. The album has the same emotional power and wide dynamic range of past Deafheaven records, but features significant new wrinkles in their sound, including a prominent grand piano. The Good: The album is a masterwork of dynamic range and building toward a dramatic moment.

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Deafheaven have long straddled a strange area of rock, where they simultaneously are called from various corners "too heavy" and "not heavy enough. " The claims (from outside sources) that they're innovators of black metal have often received cries of anger from those entrenched in the scene, and even the band themselves are keen to point out that bands were combining shoegaze and metal for years before their formation. In fact, Deafheaven seem keen to eschew 'metal' as their most common tag, and on third album New Bermuda were striving towards arena-rock ambitions - albeit with a harsher, less accommodating edge.

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Deafheaven's music is not made for the everyday. No two of their four records sound quite alike, but their mood is immediately identifiable. It's a place where serious subjects--love and loss, emotional apocalypse, existence--are amplified like sunlight through a magnifying glass. They make a kaleidoscope out of heavy music's most introspective corners: The tortured shrieks and blast beats of black metal ripple through shoegaze's immersive guitar tones, all building with the skyward patience of starry-eyed post-rock.

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Despite Deafheaven's penchant for sonic and musical experimentation, one of the true constants in their ever-evolving sound is the direct address of emotional expression. Their music shifts focus from album to album but results in something unequivocally their own. After an extended break, Ordinary Corrupt Human Love finds the band sounding both refreshed and renewed after the unrelenting, existentially crushing blackened power assault of New Bermuda.

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San Fran blackgaze titans return with their abominable orchestra. Delicious sadness ensues "Art has something to do with the achievement of stillness in the midst of chaos" said the Canadian-American novelist Saul Bellow, which has seemed akin to Deafheaven's philosophy since they released their first album, 2013’s classic 'Sunbather'. The five-piece’s output is akin to one coarse, existential howl – swathes of black metal fury are seared atop the searching sprawl associated with shoegaze (incidentally, the ugliest of musical monikers) and there's little deviation from the blueprint here on this, their fourth, the title of which is taken from the 1951 Graham Greene novel, The End Of The Affair.

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When Deafheaven— and along with them, the "is it true Black Metal though?" debate— exploded with their 2013 sophomore record Sunbather, there was always a risk they were going to be a mere flash in the pan trend. However, the San Francisco band responded with the equally well-received New Bermuda to suggest they were going to outlast the labels unfairly thrown at them, leading the band to here, their fourth album, Ordinary Corrupt Human Love. From here, there can be no mistake; Deafheaven are the real deal.

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For most, the relentless debate over where Deafheaven sit in the spectrum of black metal has already been exhausted. The short, most comprehensive answer? They do not fit neatly. For the last seven years, from the delicate elegance and sprawling narrative of their 2013 critical breakthrough Sunbather, to 2015's New Bermuda, their behemoth of a followup, which amplified the ambition of its predecessor tenfold, the once San Francisco-based band have been force-feeding new norms down the throat of a genre skilled at resisting change.   Their ….

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Deafheaven's place in the world changed drastically back in 2013, when their second album - the brutal but shimmering 'Sunbather' - became a cult hit and propelled them out of the somewhat insular black metal scene that they'd existed in for half a decade. Their 2015 follow-up, 'New Bermuda', felt like a reaction to their new-found exposure, an excellent but slightly off-balance return that gave little hints as to their future direction. Enter 'Ordinary Corrupt Human Love', a fourth studio album that at once repositions the band as a genreless powerhouse and intriguing heavy force.

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While OCHL sets Deafheaven exactly where we'd expect them to be, the now current 5-piece reposition themselves in another world entirely. But even with the predictability behind their sound, the fact remains that Deafheaven are becoming braver at pulling from areas they we may not expect them to, but all the while being conscious to not fully abandon what makes their aesthetic so riveting. "Honeycomb" was the first taste of new Deafheaven material this year and it was a smart first single to drop because it sounds like Deafheaven; it secured their fanbase because it's the sound their fans have been craving ever since New Bermuda.

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It's a fickle thing, metal. While these days it comprises an extensive list of subgenres - there's everything from a cappella folk metal to electronic grindcore - it isn't always a scene that readily welcomes change and innovation. Acts like Avenged Sevenfold and Bring Me the Horizon still struggle for acceptance, despite having grown to the status of arena headliners.

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For all the ill will that came to Deafheaven's way, they ultimately managed to overcome it through inventive and decisive musicianship. The Bay Area five-piece took many critiques for reinventing black metal's core fundamentals, and it was through that desire to encourage change that they ultimately managed to pull the genre back into the conversation. What many detractors failed to recognize was that Deafheaven wanted to revere a kind of music that is often misunderstood, and they managed to finesse and demonstrate a lot of empathy with every guttural cry.

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Deafheaven has never fit neatly into any one genre. While adopting some of the sonic signifiers of black metal -- ultra-harsh vocals, blistering tempos, progressive arrangements -- they also incorporate ballads, acoustic instruments and introspective lyrics. The California quintet is as comfortable submerging itself in cheesy beauty as it is in conjuring mayhem, all in service to the neo-poetic lyrics of singer George Clarke.

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Plenty of bands combined shoegaze and black metal before Deafheaven. They were not the first to play bright, sunny black metal in a major key, nor were they the first to channel hopelessness, despondency and genuine human emotion. But no other band has done all this with as much passion, skill and cohesion. Sunbather put them on the map, and made them a target for genre purist ire.

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It seems illogical at this point to try and convince anyone about Deafheaven's new album Ordinary Corrupt Human Love. Since 2013's Sunbather, Deafheaven have been the most divisive band in metal, riling the feathers of the genre's die-hard fans while expanding the appeal of the genre. Is Deafheaven really metal? Are they hardcore enough? Or are they simply spoon-feeding the genre to the masses? At this point, Deafheaven don't care anymore. "You Without End" opens the album with a piano and poetry read by Nadia Kury.

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Deafheaven have been provoking debate ever since they broke through with 2013's genre-bending 'Sunbather'. The San Francisco band's sound, which melds swirling, visceral black metal with luscious post-rock and shoegaze, has polarised, entranced and infuriated listeners in equal measure. A lot of energy has been spent on the internet arguing the toss over how to pigeonhole the band's music, where they belong and if they have the right to popularise extreme music.

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