Few bands are more divisive than Deafheaven. On one hand, the Bay Area crew is beloved by critics: Their 2013 album Sunbather topped many year-end best-of lists, which is pretty unusual for a black metal album. On the other, fans within the genre they supposedly call home are calling the band “poser,” “traitor” and a whole slew of horrible, vivid names for daring to release anything other than cookie-cutter metal.
Thankfully, Deafheaven doesn’t really care about being a metal band. Yes, the predominant influence on New Bermuda is metal — glorious, loud, skull-cracking metal — but there are other forces at work here as well. Hints of shoegaze that fans will recognize from Sunbather are now coupled with classic rock riffs and a hardcore chug. It’s an album that makes you want to punch the person next to you, then give them a hug.
Opener “Brought to the Water” debuts this new era of Deafheaven, opening with the same ambient wall-of-guitar sound as Sunbather’s “Dream House” before quickly transitioning into a more traditional pattern. George Clarke’s vocals — though abrasive — follow a distinct structure, and now Kerry McCoy’s chugging, melodic guitar runs surround them. The track sets the tone for New Bermuda, which challenges listeners (especially metalheads) to test the limits of what metal can be.
There’s not one song on the album that really fits the accepted definition of “black metal,” as each song here blurs the lines of the genre’s traditional confines: “Come Back”makes a zero-to-sixty transition from black-metal banger to yearning piano ballad; “Gifts to the Earth,” the album’s closer, sounds like ’90s alt-rock anchored by Clarke’s signature shriek. For a band founded on a mutual love of metal, Deafheaven shows an almost complete disregard for the genre’s borders, and the results are spectacular.
New Bermuda makes a statement but doesn’t intend on being a statement album. Yes, everything Deafheaven does seems to be an overt challenge to metal fans, from signing to Anti- Records, to embracing outside influence, to looking and dressing the way they do. But it also feels natural for the band. The quintet is all so dangerously talented that to wall them into just black metal would be doing them a disservice. By remaining unpredictable, Deafheaven has managed to follow up a masterpiece with another masterpiece, all in spite of the genre that fostered them.