Deafheaven
Ordinary Corrupt Human Love

Release Date: 2018 | Tracklist

Ah, Deafheaven, “metal’s most divisive band”, as online music publication Pitchfork, who heavily support them critically, would put it back in 2015 as the title of their profile article of the band. Ever since the release of their breakthrough record Sunbather in 2013, they received adoration by music critics and fans alike for their inventive genre blending, as well as accusations by black metal purists for being a fraud, even though they don’t consider themselves as a black metal band (despite the fact that black metal acts are part of their influences, not to mention the vocals are mainly black metal shrieks). With that being said, it still did not prevent the band to gain the appreciation of music fans (which included me, I had to admit) as a result of their more pop-friendly approach and the brilliant quality of their album. Although they pleasantly surprised many critics and fans alike in the follow-up New Bermuda, with the band showcased a more thrashing sound, I personally believed that their most recent effort, Ordinary Corrupt Human Love, as their most surprising effort in their discography.

There are reasons to be surprised for this album. Firstly, this hour-long epic is perhaps their happiest and comforting effort in their discography to date. Compare to the despair-drenched, coldly atmospheric Sunbather and the overwhelmingly bleak, intense New Bermuda, Ordinary is more of a sunny record with heat waves of guitars with a hint of coldness of George Clarke’s black metal screams. For instance, the fierce, 11-minute lead single “Honeycomb” contains an uptempo guitar solo which has a summery appeal that previous albums lacked and the epilogue of the calm, warm piano solo which serves as a beautiful sundown of the song. Heck, there’s even the line in the song, “I’m reluctant to stay sad, life beyond is a field of flowers,”, indicated that Clarke, guitarist Kerry McCoy and company have moved on from the dark clouds of trouble in New Bermuda. Moreover, the luminous album opener “You Without End”, includes an optimistic lyric line, “In a dark tunnel, new dawn approaching,”, as it seems Clarke is expecting the dawn to come, giving the album a more brighter vision. For more casual listeners of the metal scene like me who previously identify the metal genre as a uniformly bleak genre, this serves as a surprising feature, all the while shows how the band is capable of pushing the boundaries of the genre itself.

Speaking of “You Without End”, the album also filled with surprising experimentations. In fact, the song itself includes various unlikely features, such as some spoken word sections, the piano riffs, the towering guitar leads that recalls the Dog Man Star-era Suede and the Mazzy Star-like slide guitars, proofing that Deafheaven is more than just a metal band who blends the extreme ferocity of black metal and the beauty of shoegaze. What makes the album even much more pleasantly surprising, is that Clarke exhibited his melodic side in songs “Near” and “Night People”. While the former is a atmospheric melancholy that recalls the Souvlaki-era Slowdive and Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here”, the lovely, post-apocalyptic, Chelsea Wolfe-guested latter is a haunting dream pop song with electronic flavours that fits better in bands like Beach House, yet both of them cools down the overwhelming power of most other tracks. All of the tracks mentioned here helped expanded the scope of this album, without jettisoning the quality of the album, perhaps thanks to the familiar Deafheaven chord progression, making them unlikely gems in their already brilliant catalog.

Even though they experimented throughout the album, the band still remained their hallmark—the beautiful amalgam of post-rock, shoegaze and heavy metal—and blend them together with the new elements effortlessly in this album. The post-rock/shoegaze mania “Glint” is perhaps a track that could fit Sunbather, as it has the galloping drums, the Clarke’s blood-chilling screams and the wall of shoegazing guitars that are very similar to “Dream House”, yet it has the crystalline metal guitar lead in the end that you only can find in this album; the horrifying closer “Worthless Animal” contains the zig-zagging riffs that recalls the muscular New Bermuda, except the fact that it has much more intricate and progressive compositions; the dreamy centrepiece “Canary Yellow” is a sonic artwork that started with Cocteau Twins-esque shimmering guitars, then follows with the chaotic shoegazing guitars that recalls My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless, with the lust-soaked lyrics (“On and on we choke on an everlasting handsome night”) that are reminiscent to Loveless’ crowning jewel “To Here Knows When”, while showing their experimentations by incorporating a hypnotising man-choir. In short, these brilliant features showcased that the band is capable of expanding their formula without trading the quality of the materials.

Despite there are many brilliant terms to praise, there are flaws that cannot be unseen. The first downside is that it is that it is not intense as the previous recordings. In fact, “Glint” and “Honeycomb” aside, all the tracks seems to replace the blast beats in prior albums with jazzy percussions, which might disappoint earlier listeners who are used to the galloping drums in previous albums like Roads To Judah and Sunbather. Furthermore, the album can be quite schmaltzy at times, as the duel vocals of Wolfe and Clarke in “Night People” sounds like your typical romantic pop song sung by a romantic couple, which can be cringe worthy for some diehard metal fans. However, for newer listeners, these issues don’t seem to be any problem at all, since these features can help them immerse to the album easily.

Now, I had to state that I am no metalhead, just a music fan who just pay attention to Deafheaven because of the highly accomplished Sunbather, but Ordinary Corrupt Human Love catches my ear immediately and makes me ready to listen the album in full. Why？ It is because it presented numerous pleasantly surprising detours in this hour-long journey, all the while remained the best signatures of their previous works, most notably the seamless fusion of the hypnotising wall of processed guitars of shoegaze, sweeping, majestic post-rock and, of course, the chilling black metal vocals, making it a metal album that I would love to pop into in daily basis. Sure, it may not have powerful blast beats and suffer some cheesy issues, but like Pitchfork said in their review for this album, it’s their prettiest-sounding effort to date, and the obvious flaws only seems to be minor. Even with such compelling quality, cynical purists will surely continue to hate them for their heavily adulterated metal sound, but honestly, what people besides these detractors cares？This album exhibits the most important thing that musicians should have: artistic liberation and a healthy dose of ambition, which helps cementing this album as one of best albums of 2018.

Tweet

Recent reviews by this author
Burial Untrue	Kate Bush The Sensual World
Jessie Ware What's Your Pleasure?	Charli XCX How I'm Feeling Now
La Dispute Panorama	Four Tet There is Love in You

user ratings (1091)

rate it Awful - 1 Very Poor - 1.5 Poor - 2 Average - 2.5 Good - 3 Great - 3.5 Excellent - 4 Superb - 4.5 Classic - 5

3.7 great