Deafheaven - Ordinary Corrupt Human Love (2018)^{Release ID: 1327}

I guess in some twisted way Ordinary Corrupt Human Love was the album, that initially brought me to Deafheaven. Ironic, as I only now feel confident about giving my own two cents on it.

Basically the story begins with hearing a lot of praise on the album in several people's best lists for the year 2018. Several months later - after seeing Architects live at a local metal festival - I got concert-lust, but there were no shows by bands I was into happening nearby. The loophole turned out to be a Deafheaven concert. Opening for them were Touché Amoré, who were another band just sitting there in my to-do list. Due to the overall positive reaction to both bands by critics, I figured I'd give their music a couple of spins. If it's good, I would regret not going, if I got into them later and if it's bad I could keep the 25€. After listening to some mixed material of theirs, Canary Yellow hit me like a truck and it only took 2 more weeks of Sunbather and Stage Four for me to rush to buy a ticket.

Now on to the review; as far as the musical continuum of Deafheaven goes Ordinary Corrupt Human Love is perhaps the most optimistic of their releases. Roads to Judah was thematically a bit scattered, but nevertheless dealing with topics like death and unrequited love, whereas Sunbather and New Bermuda worked as concept albums of the personal turmoil of lead singer and - I assume - lyricist George Clarke. Here the sunshine, that a lot of listeners claim to be hearing in Deafheaven's music, shines probably brightest with even more post-rock passages and notably more optimism in the lyrics.

The album is kicked off with one of the weaker tracks in my opinion. You Without End goes straight into ballad territory with it's keyboard and guitar soloing and just so there is no doubt, that the boys from Deafheaven have been regularly doing their home-reading since 2013, Nadia Kury reads passages from a Tom McElravey short story over it... and don't get me wrong. This is all fine, the real problem is something else. Singer George Clarke bursts straight into his black metal vocals along with it. It feels really misplaced. In fact, You Without End sounds like something you'd think Deafheaven heard at some pub or on some DIY pass-around mix tape, that inspired them to go for blackgaze as a genre rather than them four albums into their career.

Luckily the album improves over time. Honeycomb took quite a while to grow on me, but for the last week I have been regularly getting excited over the hard rock guitar solo, that kicks in at some point after the 4 minute mark. Not to mention, I love the pretentious metaphors in the lyrics: "my love is a bulging, blue-faced fool hung from the throat by sunflower stems".

I also already sung some praise about Canary Yellow, which has an excellent progression going from an post-rock opening, towards a more black metal style and slowly moving towards its climax with memorable guitar soloing then reaching it's finale with a choir part.

Near is a decent post-rock intermission, but unfortunately not a particularly ambitious one. A similair point can be made about Night People, which features Chelsea Wolfe. It's a bit underwhelming considering the talent behind it, but I do appreciate George Clarke wanting to change things up a bit with clean vocals for the duration of the song.

The rest of the album is presented by two more lenghtier blackgaze songs. Glint is a good contender for one of the better songs on the record for it's build-up and progression. The album closes with Worthless Animal, which is fine, but makes me feel like the band went a bit into auto-pilot stylistically, as I am slowly getting deja vu vibes from the instrumentals.

At the end of the day a lot of fans were satisfied with what the record has to offer, while some critics pointed out the shortcomings of the blending of styles and claim to find the album rather uninspired.

Me? I'm kind of on the fence here. The record is decent enough as a new Deafheaven output, but despite finding some form of interest in all 7 featured tracks, it doesn't always work for me, but all in all I'd still rate it mostly positively.

7/10

2013's "Sunbather" record was one of the most divisive I can remember in my extreme metal journey & it's not hard to see why either but I'm not afraid to confidently state that I fell firmly into the camp that thought it was a masterstroke. Deafheaven's debut album "Roads to Judah" was a really solid example of post-blackgaze however "Sunbather" saw the band maximizing all aspects of their sound &, in doing so, set the metal world alight. Given the magnitude of that album, future Deafheaven releases were always going to be compared to it & that can probably be seen as a disadvantage, particularly given the tendency for people to prejudge based on past experiences. And this brings us to Deafheaven's fourth full-length album "Ordinary Corrupt Human Love" which sees the band taking their sound even further away from the black metal scene's comfort zone.

If you come in looking for black metal here then you'll be disappointed as there's really very little on offer apart from George Clarke's Ihsahn-like gurgles. In fact, it's quite hard to identify much in the way of any sort of metal for most of the record to tell you the truth. Instead the instrumentation draws from widely disparate (yet universally accessible) forms of rock music & manages to pull it all off with an ease that only the elite artists in the scene can manage. Melodic shoegaze? Tick. Stripped-back post-rock meanderings? Tick. Whispy dream pop vocals? Tick. Lush & progressive art rock excursions? Tick. Ethereal darkwave atmosphere? Tick.... & all executed with aplomb too. Opening track "You Without End" offers about the only weak point on the record via some ill-guided black metal shrieks layered over some particularly easy-listening art rock instrumentation which sounds well out of place. Thankfully the musicians execute their parts with enough sophistication to leave the track feeling predominantly positive as a whole but I have to admit that it was a strange decision to open with the weakest number on the tracklisting. From that point on Deafheaven don't put a foot wrong but in saying that they don't ever really see me thinking about reaching for my higher scores either. I guess the musical positivity that Deafheaven surround themselves with is still a little too far away from my sweet spot for that however I can't deny that they've managed to fully realize yet another brave & ambitious artistic undertaking here.

The more intense parts are still my favourite parts which won't surprise anyone but the indulgent post-rock sections are nothing short of lovely too. It's interesting that, despite the lack of genuine metal here, I still think the album is best described as post-blackgaze, mainly because George's vocals simply don't belong anywhere outside of the metal spectrum. There's not even all that much shoegaze on offer here either but there isn't another black metal-related subgenre that could possibly encompass the positivity in these melodic themes so it just seems to fit.

I'm honestly not sure that Deafheaven can put a foot wrong at this point no matter what subgenre they tackle & "Ordinary Corrupt Human Love" is yet another strong release that sees them flexing their creative muscles. Thankfully the extreme metal world seems to be ready for it too.

For fans of Alcest, Ghost Bath & Oathbreaker.