Deafheaven are in a place that every American metal band wants to be in. With 2013’s wildly successful Sunbather, they sent ripples of excitement through two opposing yet equally promising markets; hardcore metalheads who swear by Burzum and Xasthur, and indie obsessives who actively seek every My Bloody Valentine or Godspeed variant. Sunbather’s near-perfect blend of black metal, shoegaze and post-rock satisfied so many fan’s hunger for something balancing the narcotic effects all three genres; rage matched with atmosphere, melody balancing dissonance.
‘Come Back’, the first release from the band’s upcoming LP ‘New Bermuda’ (coming this October on Anti-Records), sure delivers on these themes, but lacks a unifying structure. Sunbather tossed genres together into a well-formated mix, spreading Shields-esque guitars over crisp blast beats with tactfully inserted moments of ambiance, where ‘Come Back’ shows that Deafheaven are more concerned with cleaning up individual sounds than finding an effective way of combining them. The track opens with sharp, frost-bitten, pummeling metal before an awkward segue into an acoustic-swathed mellow movement, totally losing momentum. Though production has improved and the band sounds even tighter, there’s not much to make the single thoroughly interesting.
Sunbather was a record full of effective closing, it’s greatest strength being the resulting sense of awe after every track. I still remember the way Sunbather’s opener Dream House swelled and swelled until it burst, dripping easily into a gorgeous guitar duet before slamming into a flaming finale. New Bermuda has my hopes (I think the beginning of this track contained their most bad-ass sounding riffage yet), but unfortunately my highest one is that it’s not just a record of Deafheaven trying things out.
