Deafheaven - Ordinary Corrupt Human Love

Getting to this album has been a challenge. Well, I should rephrase that, I’ve been listening to it a lot and taking breaks from it a lot ever since NPR streamed it the week before its release. Articulating my feelings about this album has been the challenge, and it was always going to be a challenge since even before it came out, not just because I have been a fan of Deafheaven since their groundbreaking 2013 release, Sunbather, but because so many other publications seem to be fans of theirs as well. Sunbather was a completely unforeseen critical success, and from the moment the stone that begat the ripple hit the pond, nearly every publication discussing Deafheaven has seemed to want to lather them with highly spiritual praise. And the deviants from the critical flock have of course been no less restrained in their expression of disdain for the band, be it the childish black metal purist mentality Deafheaven subverts by mixing bright ambience with blast beats and screamed lyrics that read more like personal poetry, or those who think some other blackgaze or ambient black metal act(s) should be getting this recognition instead.

Both of these responses to the band remained relevant when they released their follow-up, New Bermuda, in late 2015. It was an album that took many of the pretty parts of Sunbather and juxtaposed them boldly with the kinds of overtly dark and aggressive black metal parts that seemed motivated to silence the detracting notions that Deafheaven couldn’t reach the same blackened depths as bands like Gorgoroth or Mayhem. With the echoes of fanfare around Sunbather still in the air, critics mostly rushed to proclaim New Bermuda another masterpiece for the band. But fans largely saw it as kind of a slight step down, if not completely overshadowed by Sunbather. The heavier parts are impressive and enjoyable, and drummer Daniel Tracy especially put on an incredible display of talent on those parts to counter arguments that the band weren’t up to snuff on their black metal chops. Yet the intentional contrast between the crushing black metal sections and the flowery beauty of the calmer sections on New Bermuda took away from the alchemical blend between the two that made Sunbather so immediately stunning. It seemed like Deafheaven was out to prove something and trying to defy expectations by blatantly not repeating Sunbatherand by playing hard enough to discredit their naysayers. Ultimately, music journalists lauded it and hard-hearted purists’ hearts remained pretty stone cold for the most part, though it left Deafheaven in an interesting position on where to go from there.

The lead-up to Ordinary Corrupt Human Love sparked a little bit of déjà vu as early reviews showered the album with praise as a return to the beauty of Sunbather as soon as the (albeit justifiably beautiful) singles, “Honeycomb” and then “Canary Yellow” were released. While the reception was familiarly positive to New Bermuda’s a few years prior, and the sound of the singles did feel somewhat similar to Sunbather, it felt like Ordinary Corrupt Human Lovewasn’t going to be about all that familiarity, rather something else familiar yet not expected from Deafheaven.

Another reason this album has taken me some time to get to on here is the band’s music’s prominence within my personal life. Deafheaven has been a big part of the musical backdrop to my most meaningful friendships and my relationship with my significant other since 2013. I’ve delved into my deep, annoying love for Meshuggah and Gojira, but Deafheaven is where some of the most important people in my life and I have the most common ground. We have made a yearly tradition of seeing them live, their first three albums, their one-off single, and even their demo have been the musical score to our friendship together over the past five years. This context made it hard to gauge my own feelings on New Bermuda for the longest time after its release and I didn’t want to write about Ordinary Corrupt Human Love with the same uncertainty that clouded my thoughts on New Bermuda. This isn’t to say I wanted to block out the personal context this album holds and look at it coldly and solely analytically. The effect music has on my personal life and emotional state is definitely something important to me, and I would think most people would agree that they would like to have music they love play a significant role in their own lives. After all, who listens to music passionately and suppresses it from enriching their personal life and relationships?

I took my time because I wanted to become familiar with this album on the same personal level as I had with Sunbather, Roads to Judah, and New Bermuda. But I also wanted to be able to take my time to separate it from the drooling praise Pitchfork (and other publications flirting with the unlikely industry darlings like a potential goth girlfriend) were always going to give it and look at by itself it from a distance.

So how is Ordinary Corrupt Human Love, then?

Well, a lot of it stems from familiar musical ideas farmed from Sunbather as well as New Bermuda, but the first part of the album finds the band dramatically and contagiously bright in ways that seem to condense the more shimmering and euphoric parts of Sunbather into a few divine expressions of joy. It’s actually when the band repeats its past self more later on in the album that it stumbles a little bit. The band try a few new things on Ordinary Corrupt Human Love: George introduces his clean singing voice, they bring in a pretty big name collaboration for one song (Chelsea Wolfe), and they focus on and expand upon singular emotional facets of their sound for extended periods at a time.

The first track, “You Without End”, starts the album with a moody piano melody overlaid by slowly swelling, lush, post-rock/shoegaze guitar leads. Right from the start it feels romantic and endearing (as the title suggests in bright neon lights). Of course, part of that comes from its familiar instrumental tones that harken back to summers with Sunbather and my lover and I cooling down after the emotional flurry of “Dream House” with the beauty of its appendix song/section “Irresistible”. I’m sure I’m not the only one with an experience like that though. Nevertheless, “You Without End” is as sweet and loving as its first few minutes set it up to be. It integrates these spoken word samples full of flowery imagery at the beginning before George Clarke enters with his black metal screams over the more fully immersive guitar atmosphere that overtakes the piano. The song never taps into the more blackened side of Deafheaven’s sound instrumentally, instead keeping to more of the more post-metal/post-rock they cultivated during the softer moments of New Bermuda. The lyrics are as endearing as the title and instrumentals suggest, seemingly depicting a snapshot with one’s lover going down a dark, likely metaphoric tunnel of some sort (George’s lyrics are often deeply intertwined with or drawn from his own personal experiences). The last stanza, “And then the world will grow / And then the world will know of you, / Of all things love, of all things true” ends the song with a simple expression of adoration for a lover. It’s simple, it’s pretty, and it’s definitely the most laid-back introduction to a Deafheaven album so far. Its only real problem is perhaps that it doesn’t do as much as it could with the time it has, as well as only focusing on one facet of Deafheaven’s complex musical personality for such an extensive time.

The second track “Honeycomb” leads seamlessly out of “You Without End”. The song plays with a very similar tone to “Dream House” until the jubilant guitar solo near the middle of the track takes the song into mush less pensive territory. I was puzzled by this unfamiliar moment in the song at first, but after a number of listens it is definitely a fitting part of the song and the album. The band sound happier to be alive than they did three years ago, with the lyrics “I’m reluctant to stay sad / life beyond is a field a flowers” indicating a newfound joy in life and solitude within the same world that spawned so much torment. I could be projecting a bit here onto the lyrics, as George ends the song by calling his love a “bulging, blue-faced fool / hung from the throat / by sunflower stems”. But the music, especially the bright, shoegaze-y exit section, paints a picture of emotional triumph that demands to shine for all the world to see. The more one-dimensionally joyful mood set by the song’s lyrics renders it less emotionally dynamic and conflicted than songs like “Luna” or “Dream House”. But it’s a pretty good representation of Deafheaven at their brightest and most at peace, something I wouldn’t want to take away from them.

I love the opening clean guitar passage and the heavenly ethereal choir vocals hovering behind it on the third song “Canary Yellow”. Very reminiscent of bands like Explosions in the Sky at their most elated, this post-rock part of the song carries the euphoria from “Honeycomb” over to the second side of the first record. When the song reaches its metallic threshold of its swell it reminds me of the title track from Sunbather and of “Baby Blue” with the early metal section’s prominent guitar pull-offs. It keeps to the more Sunbather-like explosion of semi-melancholic emotion, and George’s clean delivery of the final refrain, “on and on we choke on an everlasting handsome night / my lover’s blood rushes right through me” echoing in the background provides a conclusive feeling to the mysteriously and visually vivid poetry preceding it that seems to worship a lover’s allure and complexity in some way. The diverse imagery is difficult to piece together and the more familiar blend of pensive post-rock and cathartic black metal still only seems to contribute to this complexity of emotions on the song.

“Near” is the first kind of breather song on the album. At only five and a half minutes, it’s a simple, daydreaming reverb-y, ambient post-rock piece on which George Clarke sings entirely cleanly for the first time for the band. The nondescript style with which he sings kind of points to what seems like a lack of complete confidence in his abilities to go beyond the small range he sings in here. Perhaps they’re keeping live shows in mind and making sure this will be something George can sing after belting out black metal screams for half an hour or more. It’s definitely more of a mood piece than anything else; it’s pretty, but it feels like it’s not bringing much new to the album aside from the romantic longing its short lyrics portray. The three-line song, “Thought I saw you there / Wishing you were near / Can I rest for awhile” introduces the first deeply melancholic moment on the album, but it feels like it perhaps floats through it for a little too long, a little too inactively. It’s not bad and it makes sense in the context of the album, but it’s no “Please Remember” or “Irresistible”.

“Glint” could kinda-sorta be considered this album’s “Vertigo” for its long, winding guitar intro accented nicely with ride cymbal. The heavier section of the song rides more blast beats than what has preceded and traverses a few emotional shifts quite akin to those aplenty on Sunbather. Though reminiscent of the dynamic of their sophomore effort, “Glint” is a little less consistent in the potency of the emotions it conjures. It stays more focused on the heavier side of the band’s sound and I appreciate the way they show their dynamic abilities even without resorting to soft post-rock bits, but it feels like an afterthought compared to what they accomplished all across Sunbather and on the best parts of New Bermuda. The lyrics deal with aging and the beauty that remains with it, as well as what seems to be potentially conception and birth, again focused on an aging relationship with a well-adored lover. It’s a difficult song to draw any particular meaning from beyond its upfront, and possibly somewhat naïve, musings upon aging love, but it’s a decent addition to the album, with a good couple of interesting guitar passages.

The sixth song, “Night People”, is another short, piece that eschews any black metal presence in favor of semi-gothic ambience. It’s also the track to which Chelsea Wolfe and her longtime collaborator Ben Chisholm lent their vocal and production talents. I had seen both artists teasing their collaboration in the studio, and naturally got pretty fuckin’ hyped to hear Chelsea Wolfe, now confidently immersed in writing unique, experimental, sludgy, post-metal after Hiss Spun, with Deafheaven. Perhaps it was me setting my expectations too high/specifically, but I found “Night People” to be kind of underwhelming and Chelsea Wolfe’s unique vocal talents criminally underutilized. It’s a nice, soothing breather song (despite the gruesome illustration of drug-addicted night life it seems to poetically depict in odd contrast to the love-themed songs before it) and she carries the song vocally in a way that, even as subtle as it is, shows how vast the vocal talent gap is between the two. George is a good vocalist in his own right, but he brings nothing special with his clean singing, which he arguably doesn’t deserve to be doing alongside Chelsea Wolfe. As for her contribution to the song, Chelsea can do, and has done, so much more with her unique voice and she’s clearly more confident than ever amid booming drums and thick walls of distorted guitar sound. I can see why they might not want to do some other long-ass song with a feature role like Chelsea’s being so potentially critical to the song that they wouldn’t be able to replicate it in a live setting, but it still feels like such a wasted opportunity on the album.

“Worthless Animal” closes the album on a strange lyrical note, an allegory of speaker protecting the innocence and absence of fear of a young deer from an impending wolf’s preying. The final line, “all who have forgotten remember now” perhaps suggests an unsettling return to reality from the love-laden euphoria expressed previously with mental scars of needing to fight and drive out primal violence with violence to protect something cherished. It’s probably the strangest George has been lyrically for he band, but it narrates well and provides a tangible feeling of realization of the difficulty of loving and maintaining beauty amid merciless cruelty. Nevertheless, it kind of feels like a weird place to end the album lyrically, ending with confrontation of the gritty reality the album’s title surrounds rather than doing that first, or at least earlier, in the album and using it to frame the nobility of the innocent love they worship on the first four, maybe five, songs. Musically “Worthless Animal” sounds like a combination of something like “The Pecan Tree” from Sunbatherand something like “Violet” from Roads to Judah. Like a lot of their debut album it finds the band falling a little bit into less unique and fully identity-formed post-metal and it doesn’t bring quite as many fresh sounds or new ideas to the table at this point on the record, ending it on kind of a less expressive note than it definitely could have from an instrumental standpoint.

Overall, Ordinary Corrupt Human Love is a fine addition to the Deafheaven catalog, but like the very love the title references, it doesn’t come without its own blemishes. This is probably the first Deafheaven album that expends the vast majority of its creative energy in the first half. The creative slowdown and the strange lyrical trajectory that the last few songs take make me wish that the uglier underside of human nature depicted through those songs was done perhaps a little more vibrantly and maybe even with the same overt darkness that characterized the extreme depths of New Bermuda. It’s these times when the band seems like they’re trying to recapture the emotional diversity of Sunbather that they fall short, considering what that album proved this sound could do. As for the more optimistic love songs on the album, they’re honestly among Deafheaven’s best work and they make me wish they perhaps chased more exclusively the euphoria that they captured on those songs for the rest of the album from both the lyrical and musical standpoint. Both the shimmering beauty made bombastic by the metallic supplement to Deafheaven’s more brightly atmospheric pieces and George Clarke’s vivid and sensory poetic style pair well in the context of the musing love songs that set the early mood of the album. Knowing how personal George Clarke’s lyrics are, the confusing lyrical trajectory this album takes makes me wonder where he stands mentally and emotionally. Granted these songs’ lyrics probably weren’t all written in the same week, but being that they speak to a central topic, I wonder to what degree do these respective snapshots represent George. I also wonder what could be next for Deafheaven musically. I wouldn’t say they’ve fully backtracked, though I’m sure some will say so, but the last half of the album shows that they seem to have exhausted that style of playing or at least that they can’t quite outdo Sunbather at its own game right now. It makes me both eager and anxious for what the future hold for them, as I’m sure they are as well.

A short personal coda:

Deafheaven’s music has been such a beautiful, phasic, soundtrack that has strangely synched up with what’s been going on in my life ever since I first heard it in 2013.

Sunbather captured a time of my life full of dreams and naive love of so many sorts, and the beauty that album conveyed was like nothing I had ever experienced, and like so many other new experiences around that time, gave me this hope for my future and the life I share with the ones I love being full of that kind of beauty.

New Bermuda seemed to symbolize the immense darkness that crept into my life when I also moved just before it came out, to a place I too became disillusioned with, away from the person I love most. But it also mirrored the duality of deep, pitch black depression, wanting to end my life so many times and not being able to / stopping myself from doing it because I couldn’t let myself do that to her.

And now Ordinary Corrupt Human Love has come at a time of growth and triumph from that time of darkness with all sorts of realizations about my own love, ordinary, flawed, and beautifully human as it is. The wildly beautiful sounds on this album once again match this new outlook on the world and human life, as corrupt as it may be, and being in a place now where I can see the beauty I wasn’t able to for a long time after accepting its inevitable blemishes, and not just the idealization I was chasing and dreaming of.

I have to thank Deafheaven for all the music they’ve poured their hearts into. It has done what most music strives so much to do even with the knowledge that it likely won’t, and truly changed my life.

New Bermuda provided the solidarity I needed through the darkness it embodied and the encouragement to come back to the place of beauty I was in with Sunbather, and Ordinary Corrupt Human Love has been the perfect expression of how much more secure I am in that place of beauty, acknowledging now instead of trying to avoid the imperfections of my own and everyone’s love.

I wonder if Ordinary Corrupt Human Love has set any kind of direction for the future for Deafheaven as well?