Deafheaven's clean-vocal, non-metal album 'Infinite Granite' is here (review, stream)
Deafheaven needed to change things up. You could feel it on their last album, a musically ambitious work that was regularly compared to Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness yet still scanned as black metal. They were clearly trying to break out of their shells on that album, and with Infinite Granite, they’ve done it. They moved to a new label (Sargent House), hired a new producer (M83/Paramore/Jimmy Eat World collaborator Justin Meldal-Johnsen, though longtime producer Jack Shirley did still engineer this one), and most noticeably of all, lead shrieker George Clarke spends the majority of the album singing instead of screaming.
“Maybe around [2015’s] New Bermuda, I felt like everyone was expanding on their instrument and getting better at what they were doing. And in certain ways I was as well, but there’s a part of me that’s always felt like the weak musical link,” George told Pitchfork. “I wanted to bring more to the table—and also to service the lyrics differently.”
A black metal band switching from primarily screaming to primarily singing is a change that would normally piss off the metal community, but Deafheaven have been pissing off the metal community from day one. Their shoegazy, post-rocky version of black metal has been the butt of jokes amongst “trve” black metal fans for a decade; those who actually like the band probably appreciate that the pretty side of their instrumentation is now represented vocally too.
George had done a little bit of singing on Deafheaven records before, but it was never the focal point, and he never seemed totally confident in his clean vocals. On Infinite Granite, he boldly pushes his singing voice to the forefront, and he proves to have gotten really good at it. On this album, George kinda sounds like Davey Havok singing on a Turnover record, his gothy croon fitting perfectly with the band’s blend of shoegaze, post-punk, and dream pop.
There are moments on Infinite Granite that still qualify as black metal, and George does shriek sometimes, but those moments are rare. It’s largely not a metal album at all, and not in the way that purists snarkily insisted Sunbather “isn’t metal.” It’s a shoegazy rock record, much closer to bands like Hum and Nothing than to Deafheaven’s usual blackgaze compatriots like Alcest. What makes it so remarkable, is that it still clearly sounds like Deafheaven. They’ve managed to make the most drastic change of their career without losing grasp of what made them stand out in the first place.
If I had to criticize Infinite Granite for something, it wouldn’t be that it’s not metal enough or that George doesn’t scream enough. It’d be that, though the musical progression is effective, the songs all sound a little too similar, especially compared to Ordinary Corrupt Human Love and New Bermuda, where each individual song felt like its own unique beast. Infinite Granite adds significant new weapons to Deafheaven’s arsenal, but they’d benefit from incorporating some of their other ideas into this new sound too. Maybe they will on the next album; Infinite Granite feels like a fresh start for Deafheaven, and their future looks as bright right now as it did when Sunbather first came out.
Infinite Granite is out now on Sargent House. Stream it and watch a video below, and pick up a vinyl copy in our store (we’ve got a couple other Deafheaven records available now too).
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30 Essential Songs from the Shoegaze / Heavy Crossover
My Bloody Valentine – “You Made Me Realise” (1988)
Swervedriver – “Rave Down” (1990)
Way before "metal-gaze" was a thing, MBV's UK neighbors and Creation Records labelmates Swervedriver were getting metal cred. "Rave Down," the title track of their 1990 sophomore EP (which also ended up on their 1991 debut album Raise) was made single of the week by a heavy metal magazine, which prompted guitarist Jimmy Hartridge to say "Maybe we're the start of an indie-metal cross-over" in a 1990 Melody Maker interview. If only he knew just how on point that comment would end up being.
It's not hard to see why a metal mag might've liked "Rave Down." That crushing riff in the middle of the song owed as much to sludge metal as the more pillowy parts owed to shoegaze. MBV could add some weight into their songs when they wanted to, but "Rave Down" really toed that shoegaze/metal line in 1990 as much as Hum's breakthrough hit "Stars" would five years later. Swervedriver not only ended up opening for Hum years later, they also did US tours in the early days with Soundgarden (1992) and The Smashing Pumpkins (1993). With monster riffs like "Rave Down" in their arsenal, it's no wonder the grunge-loving US crowds latched onto them.
Catherine Wheel – “Kill Rhythm” (1993)
The Smashing Pumpkins – “Rocket” (1993)
Starflyer 59 – “A House Wife Love Song” (1995)
Quicksand – “Delusional” (1995)
Failure – “Saturday Savior” (1996)
LA's Failure started out as more of straight-up grunge/alt-rock band, but they slowly inched their way towards shoegaze and space rock, and it all culminated in 1996's Fantastic Planet, their third album and final new release until their mid 2010s reunion. There are a lot of songs on Fantastic Planet that perfectly navigate the shoegaze/space/grunge/punk/metal divide ("Stuck On You," "Another Space Song," "Leo," "Sergeant Politeness," to name four), but it's opening track "Saturday Savior" that really epitomizes what the heavy shoegaze sound is today. It's as catchy and anthemic as anything on alt-rock radio in the mid '90s, but it's cloaked in atmosphere and moves at a glacial pace. It's the perfect way to kick off the album that became their masterpiece.
Unfortunately, said masterpiece wasn't received as well as it deserved to be, and Failure broke up just a year later. Like Hum, the album became hugely influential over the years, and with the band's eventual reunion came the long overdue recognition of Fantastic Planet as one of the true classic records of '90s alternative.
Deftones – “Be Quiet and Drive (Far Away)” (1997)
Hum – “Isle of the Cheetah” (1998)
Hum's 1995 hit "Stars" is the band's most historically significant song, a super catchy fusion of post-hardcore and shoegaze that managed to get this type of music on the radio, but its one hit wonder status has done a disservice to the rest of Hum's music in the mainstream public eye, so I chose something else for this list. Plus, as fantastic as 1995's You'd Prefer an Astronaut is, its followup Downward Is Heavenward is really the album where Hum pushed their sound to the limits and raised the bar for what heavy, spacey, shoegazy rock could be. It's a crime that the album was viewed as anything but a creative and artistic leap from its predecessor.
It's hard to pick just one song, but the nearly-seven-minute opener "Isle of the Cheetah" is a great place to start. It immediately introduces Downward Is Heavenward as a more ambitious album than You'd Prefer an Astronaut, with jangly acoustic guitars, gentle piano lines, thick layers of sludge, prog riffage, and Matt Talbott's angelic vocals all swirling together to create the song's towering wall of sound. "Stars" was digestible enough to become a fluke hit, but the world wasn't ready for something as immersive as this.
Far – “Bury White” (1998)
Castor – “Stay Lo” (1999)
Cave In – “Big Riff” (2000)
Shiner – “The Egg” (2001)
Centaur – “The Same Place” (2002)
Hopesfall – “Escape Pod for Intangibles” (ft. Matt Talbott) (2002)
Boris – “Farewell” (2005)
Jesu – “Silver” (2006)
Title Fight – “Head In the Ceiling Fan” (2012)
Cloakroom – “Bending” (2013)
Paramore – “Future” (2013)
Nothing – “Hymn to the Pillory” (2014)
Lantlôs – “Azure Chimes” (2014)
Superheaven – “I’ve Been Bored” (2015)
Holy Fawn – “Dark Stone” (2018)
Torche – “Admission” (2019)
Alcest – “Sapphire” (2019)
Greet Death – “You’re Gonna Hate What You’ve Done” (2019)
Hum – “Cloud City” (2020)
Clearbody – “One More Day” (2020)
Deafheaven – “Great Mass of Color” (2021)
Listen and/or subscribe to our playlist of all 30 songs: