DEAFHEAVEN

Hear “Canary Yellow” from the upcoming album “Ordinary...

Tue, 12 Jun 2018 10:21:24 -0700

Hear “Canary Yellow” from the upcoming album “Ordinary Corrupt Human Love” out July 13, 2018 on Anti Records
Visit Deafheaven.com for tour dates and pre-order information.

Deafheaven 2018 EU/UK Tour

Fri, 08 Jun 2018 10:51:27 -0700

Deafheaven will be touring the EU/UK following dates in the US.
Tickets available at deafheaven.com

All shows w. INTER ARMA
SEP 13 Warsaw, PL @ Hybrydy
SEP 14 Poznan, PL @ U Bazyla
SEP 15 Dresden, DE @ Beatpol
SEP 17 Gothenburg, SE @ Pustervik
SEP 18 Oslo, NO @ Rockefeller
SEP 19 Stockholm, SE @ Kraken
SEP 20 Copenhagen, DK @ Vega
SEP 22 Amsterdam, NL @ Paradiso
SEP 23 Esch Alzette, LU @ Rockhal
SEP 25 Antwerp, BE @ Trix
SEP 26 Koln, DE @ Essigfabrik
SEP 27 Berlin, DE @ Bi Nuu
SEP 28 Karlsruhe, DE @ Jubez
SEP 30 Bristol, UK @ The Fleece
OCT 01 Manchester, UK @ Gorilla
OCT 02 Glasgow, UK @ Art School
OCT 03 Leeds, UK @ Stylus
OCT 05 London, UK @ ULU
OCT 06 Nijmegen, NL @ Soulcrusher Festival
OCT 07 Paris, FR @ La Maroquinerie
OCT 09 Munich, DE @ Feierwerk
OCT 10 Winterthur, CH @ Salzhaus
OCT 11 Milan, IT @ Legend
OCT 12 Bologna, IT @ TPO
OCT 13 Zagreb, HR @ Mochvara
OCT 14 Vienna, AT @ Arena

A Day In LA With Deafheaven // Stereogum

Thu, 07 Jun 2018 12:03:21 -0700

**Loud Love : A Day In LA With Deafheaven**
The California screamers open up about real life, baby ducks, and ‘Ordinary Corrupt Human Love’

Full article by Larry Fitzmaurice via Stereogum

Everyone has to grow up eventually — even ducklings. “Look, dude — the baby ducklings!” Deafheaven guitarist Kerry McCoy stops as we’re mid-conversation, pointing out a plump of web-footed friends on a small rolling pitch alongside the walking path of Los Angeles’ Echo Park.

“I know! They’re getting big,” the band’s howling lead singer George Clarke marvels, as the two stop to briefly ponder the not-quite-grown, no-longer-young fowl squatting and waddling on the grass.

“I saw them the other day, too,” says McCoy.

“They were more yellow before,” Clarke explains with a level of attentiveness that would make one think he raised the ducklings himself.

I’m here to observe what Clarke describes to me as “what a normal day for us is like,” as Deafheaven luxuriate in the relative calm before the busyness of touring and promo that will accompany the release of their fourth album, Ordinary Corrupt Human Love (out July 13 via ANTI-). These days, Clarke and McCoy are sticklers for routine — and as they recount their regular goings-on to me, it’s slightly adorable that these longtime friends’ day-to-day approach bears close similarity: wake up around 7 in the morning, hit the gym, run some errands, meet up in the park for a bit, and watch a movie or an episode of Billions before crashing out. Both spend part of their day caring for others: Clarke for his grandfather who currently lives with him, and McCoy for a few persistently hungry cats. “I have to stay out until 6 or 7 PM, otherwise they meow until they get food,” he mock-complains with a grin.

Earlier in the day, Clarke and I hit up the Echo Lake outpost of crunchy Cali natural-food chain Lessen’s, as he dumps a variety of salad-bar ingredients — corn, beets, kale, shredded cabbage and peppers, and a heaping helping of steamed veggies, if you’re looking to take on the Deafheaven Diet — into a container. We walk over to the sprawling Echo Park and Clarke unfurls a sizable blanket, festooned with the album art for the band’s 2013 star-making LP Sunbather, before stripping to a white tank-top and laying out belly-down to nosh while we chat about the latest mixtape from Oakland rapper All Black. McCoy joins us soon after along with former member Stephen Clark, who stoically sips from a bottle of water and sucks down a few cigs while the trio are quite literally sunbathing under the LA rays.

All it takes is one listen to Ordinary Corrupt Human Love to deduct that this period of respite is well-earned. Since their alluring 2011 debut Roads To Judah, the band’s dark-arts alchemy of death metal’s frigid rush, shoegaze’s impressionistic swarm, and the emotional catharsis of post-rock has somehow only grown more epic with every release. That’s even more true with their latest record, which at times recalls Mellon Collie-era Smashing Pumpkins and Sunny Day Real Estate’s Diary in its ultra-bright melodic sweep. There are female vocals present, courtesy of West Coast occult-rocker Chelsea Wolfe — as well as actual singing, as Clarke shows off a deeper vocal register beyond his signature burned-out bark.

The personal boundary-pushing and overall prettiness of Ordinary Corrupt Human Love doesn’t so much suggest a newer, shinier Deafheaven as it does a natural progression (or a full realization, even) of the genre-blending hard rock sound they’ve spent most of the decade refining. As tempting as it might be to refer to the album as Deafheaven’s “mature” turn, there’s still a youthful passion that courses through it like a lit match dropped into dry brush — but that doesn’t mean the quintet haven’t gone through some serious personal changes in the interim between 2015’s New Bermuda and now (which marks, to date, the longest gap between Deafheaven records).

“We were 24 when Sunbather came out,” Clarke reflects while discussing the intense emotions and personal strain the band’s been through since that record’s release. “We were still sleeping on floors when we were home, but the rest of the time we were on tour with idle hands and free cash.” He pauses for a second and chuckles ruefully. “Some people are smart — but we decided not to be.”

Before their current residence in LA (Clarke and McCoy have lived in the city for about four years now) and Deafheaven’s teeth-cutting Bay Area days, the pair spent their adolescence scrapping about in the central California suburbs of Modesto. “It was normal,” McCoy describes their respective upbringings, “but it’s all relative. I’m sure Bill Gates’ kids have seen some shit, too.” But he’s quick to note that the relative mundanity of their upbringing also made for a normalization of the intolerance the young punks experienced growing up, too: “I’d just accepted that the way the world went was seeing a giant truck with a Confederate flag drive by, calling me a fag.” (In the middle of this parkside recollection, Clarke interrupts to point out something decidedly not normal: a shirtless pedestrian sporting a full-chest Monster energy drink tattoo. “Check out how lit this tattoo is,” he giggles, as we briefly debate its authenticity.)

When he was 15, McCoy’s father took him to a protest against the Iraq War, and he wore a white armband to school afterwards, which resulted in him getting “destroyed” by his classmates. “We recently went to the March For Our Lives,” Clarke mentions, “and I think it’s really cool that kids these days — even if they’re not 100% informed on stuff — are really making an effort to be. Comparatively, there was no one [in high school] thinking about anything else other than the direct narrative you were given in this small town.”

Music had been in both of their lives from an early age — McCoy’s father once worked as a music journalist, and some of Clarke’s earliest memories include leafing through CD booklets with his mother — and the outsider feeling both of them shared only further deepened their sonic interests. “When you’re living in the Central Valley and you’re into ‘alternative’ things, it forces you further into the hole you’re digging for yourself,” Clarke explains. “You’re already a loser with acne, and now you’re painting your nails for a Misfits show,” McCoy follows up with a chuckle. His first band was a punky high school outfit called The Confused, which self-distributed a CD called What The Hell that everyone in his social circle thought “sucked.” Clarke’s inaugural musical foray was in a band called Fear And Faith Alike that, in his words, “was very 2002 metalcore.”

CREDIT: Frazer Harrison / Getty Images

Clarke and McCoy first became friends when the latter saw “this fool” (Clarke) sitting outside in the rain during high school, decked out in fishnet arm sleeves, a Slayer T-shirt, and a white backpack covered with pentagrams and band names scrawled in Bic. They stayed close as the former bounced around high schools, returning to Modesto after barely graduating in San Jose; after a few failed attempts at forming post-high school bands, the two formed Deafheaven in 2009 after McCoy joined Clarke to share a $500/month apartment in the Upper Haight area of San Francisco.

Deafheaven began as a pretty much anonymous project, to the point where the pair created a Facebook page for the band that essentially positioned it as a one-man act. “We didn’t tell anyone we grew up with about it,” Clarke explains. “We knew if we told people it was us, everyone would be like ‘Fuck off.'” In 2010, they recorded a demo with Bay Area producer Jack Shirley for the cost of $500, a sum which Clarke and McCoy (who were scrambling to even make monthly rent) struggled to pay back for six months.

“This man’s patience is endless,” Clarke speaks admirably about Shirley, whom McCoy refers to as “the Ian McKaye of the West Coast” and “like a straight-edge Marine”; he’s produced every Deafheaven record since. “They were broke beyond broke,” recalls Shirley, whose work with Deafheaven has led him to record acts like Wolves In The Throne Room and Jeff Rosenstock. “It wasn’t a huge deal, though. I try to be patient in those situations, and I’m glad I didn’t [let money get in the way], because it would’ve severed my ties with a band that I have a great relationship with now.”

After the demo made the rounds online, Deafheaven expanded to a full-band lineup and signed to Converge frontman Jacob Bannon’s Deathwish Inc. label, who released Roads To Judah and Sunbather — the latter of which received a profile-raising critical response that metal and “heavy” music in general typically doesn’t enjoy. “We went from a band that nobody really gave a fuck about, to … not the world’s biggest band, but a thing!” McCoy exclaims. “I had an apartment, I moved to LA, I got a girlfriend — life got kind of big.”

The success Deafheaven enjoyed following Sunbather’s release was, for a band on their level, a bit dizzying. Their fanbase spanned kindred spirits like Mono and Explosions In The Sky to rapper Danny Brown and Third Eye Blind’s Stephan Jenkins. On the other hand, the band found themselves unwittingly receiving the indie-TMZ treatment after a Swedish blogger spotted them hanging out at the VIP area of Gothenburg’s Way Out West festival with a Sub Pop representative (full disclosure: I was also present for said hang), ginning up a post shortly after speculating about the band’s potential next career moves — a surprise to the folks back at Deathwish. “I felt so bad,” Clarke says in a tone of sincerity about the accidental reveal.

CREDIT: Gari Askew II / Stereogum

Combined with the extensive post-Sunbather touring schedule, the increased attention on Deafheaven — as well as the pressures of writing and recording the band’s next album, which they’d committed to within a tight time frame under new label home ANTI- — was starting to take its toll on everyone involved. “All this touring and great stuff was fun and exciting, but it blows up your personality with regards to things you have when you become middle-class,” McCoy states. “And you have habits that blow up with that.”

As work on New Bermuda progressed, the pressure of following up their big breakthrough began to wear on the band — hard. Shirley states that, as a “habitually sober” person, he didn’t witness any dysfunction in the recording studio; but McCoy describes the ways in which Deafheaven’s members dealt with the situation as “unhealthy,” and he and Clarke started to literally lose sleep over the prospect of what would come next. “I’d wake up in the middle of the night thinking that everyone was mad at me because the record sucked,” says McCoy, “and we’d all have to go back to Whole Foods — everyone was laughing at us.”

Various substances were on-hand and frequently present during this time — a product of bad habits never dropped and exacerbated by the party-hardy temporary lifestyle that touring afforded. “You’d be like, ‘Well, I gotta be in the practice space for five hours today — better bring two 40’s,'” Clarke remembers. “When you’re touring for five years, your body degrades,” explains guitarist Shiv Mehra, who joined the band along with drummer Daniel Tracy while Sunbather was being recorded. “Drinking doesn’t help.”

Clarke recalls a show in Sao Paulo on the band’s first South American tour supporting New Bermuda as a colliding point for the band’s substance use and personal strain. “It should’ve been insane,” he recalls with a touch of regret, “But everyone was backstage burnt that the booze wasn’t there yet.”

“We were all just sitting there staring at our phones, waiting for whoever — or whatever — to show up,” McCoy adds. “Our entire world wants to come backstage and be the guy to hang out with you, and they know there’s a certain way to do that.”

“We were all still bothered by each other from touring,” Clark, who possesses a quiet yet thoughtful demeanor, states. “We didn’t have any time off from each other for years.” Following New Bermuda’s tour cycle — a period of time he says “quite literally ruined his life” — he chose to leave the band and was replaced by current bassist Chris Johnson, but still remains close with everyone.

“I didn’t handle having money well,” Clark asserts with straightforward conviction. “It was so easy to party, and I was never much of a partier — so I was all over the world having fun, with no longevity in mind. It all came crashing down.”

“It was a dark and bad experience,” McCoy states plainly on the time period surrounding New Bermuda. By the end of the album cycle, everyone was exhausted, and the mere act of being in the band had turned into drudgery.

“It stopped being fun,” Clarke states on his view towards the band at that point. “It became a chore.”

I ask if there was ever a point during this period of time in which he thought Deafheaven would cease to exist. Later, when I relay his answer to others in the band, they’re quick to note it was an exaggeration, but it’s a rough reply regardless: “I kind of thought someone would die,” says Clarke. We’re not gonna break up because we don’t have anything else, but something drastic or scary happening was within the realm of possibility. If anything would’ve taken us down, it would’ve been … tragic.”

When I press on if there were any specific close calls that took place, the three demur, nervously laugh, and murmur to themselves, “Maybe — not really,” declining to elaborate. “When you’re fuckin’ around, you’re fuckin’ around,” Clarke says with an uneasy chuckle.

Clarke quickly follows up: “When you have a problem, you have a problem.”

Work on Ordinary Corrupt Human Love informally began in late 2016 around a single piano riff McCoy had been toying around with, but much of the album was written and recorded from October of last year until this past February. Deafheaven camped out in a cluster of Oakland homes and, after an informal jam session during the first day of recording, found that the time off did them good.

“We finally dealt with all the stuff that made New Bermuda so dark — and when we did, we realized that all that other stuff was junk,” McCoy passionately describes. “When we all got in a room together, I was like, ‘This was the juice of life right here.'”

“It was like we’d been holding our breath for three years, finally let it out, took another one, and said ‘Everything’s gonna be OK,'” Clarke adds.

In truth, there was still a ways to go. To this day, Deafheaven’s members describe themselves as living “healthier” than before, but McCoy is the only band member who’s completely sober, a decision he made during recording late last year after an extended struggle with drug addiction. It’s a sensitive topic for him to discuss, and the details he’s willing to offer regarding his path to sobriety are scant — but he makes it unmistakably clear that things could not go on the way they were for much longer.

“I’d come to a point where I was done being out there,” he explains, “And I was willing to try anything to get off it.” McCoy reached out to a friend, who helped put him on the path to recovery; he’s been sober since late 2017. “My favorite thing in the world was to play guitar,” he states, “And for a long time, I forgot that. Ever since I made this decision, my life has gotten immeasurably better.”

Casting aside the past was essential for not just McCoy, but the entirety of Deafheaven to move forwards after the fraught period of time they were trying to leave behind. “I don’t think anyone who worked on New Bermuda wanted to make another record that sounded like New Bermuda,” Clarke states, who goes on to describe Ordinary Corrupt Human Love as the sound of “people enjoying what they’re doing.” If the aesthetic of the new album reflects the emotions of the people who recorded it, then the lyrical content zooms in on the world around them — the splendor and sameness of peoples’ everyday lives.

CREDIT: Gari Askew II / Stereogum

The universal, explicitly humanistic focus was developed after Clarke began collaborating with photographer Nick Steinhardt to, in his words, “photograph people in their natural habitat.” “I told him I didn’t want anything extraordinary — just people in their everyday routine, looking at a snapshot of someone in their day and just drinking it in,” he explains. The album’s cover features an anonymous woman in Los Angeles’ Civic Center area, her scarf blowing in front of her face; the inlay art features a child holding out his hand to his mother as he prepares to cross the street.

McCoy describes the album cover as “a potential alternate version” of the iconic album art for Radiohead’s The Bends, and Clarke cites the tinted-hue portraiture of Belle And Sebastian’s visual art as a parallel — both comparisons serving as reminders that, despite their roots in heavy music, their palettes span far beyond what genre purists might come to expect.

And if Deafheaven’s genre-agnostic approach seemed polarizing around the time of Sunbather, it seems weirdly prescient now. In a way, the 29-year-old McCoy and Clarke are indicative of the landscape-flattening streaming generation, in a good way. Sure, it’s easy to bemoan the age of the algorithm and the fluctuating state of discovery for budding music fans in the digital age. But it’s even easier to forget that discovering “good” music used to possess a distinct social element not far off from joining the football team in high school: Are the indie kids any different than the jocks if they still bristle at people joining their lunch table?

For Deafheaven’s and younger generations, discovering new music is easier than ever, and if you’re willing to turn discovery into creativity as they have been, the possibilities are endless. And anyway, even though Deafheaven’s earlier work was sometimes overshadowed by the band’s perpetual and ineffective battle with the metal scene, the band’s members have since learned to hang with the genre misconceptions. “My girlfriend sent me a screenshot about how ‘Honeycomb’ has a punk section — that’s textbook Oasis!” McCoy says with an easygoing laugh that speaks to a greater truth when it comes to getting older. Sometimes it’s easier to just let old grudges go.

Despite the cloudy forecast, it’s a bit brighter of a day than we’re expecting. With the threat of sunburn fast approaching, we pack up the blanket, take a leisurely walk around the park, and head to the 826 Time Travel Mart. The Mart’s a funky Sunset Blvd. spot funded by the Dave Eggers-founded nonprofit 826, featuring arch, kitschy items ranging from giant dinosaur eggs to a powdered concoction called “robot milk” — but McCoy’s less invested in the temporally-out-of-whack wares on display than he is in the tutoring courses being offered in the next room of the nonprofit-funded space.

An employee explains the programs offered as McCoy listens intently, and when Clarke returns from grabbing a coffee nearby he does similarly. At first blush, the thoughtfulness and social investment that the pair show during my time with them might seem too fitting of a narrative for a band trying to straighten up and fly right — but such character traits often come with growing up, too.

“Nikki Sixx was 27 when shit got really bad and he tried to clean up for the first time,” Clarke points out as our time comes to a close, before McCoy has to go check on the cats and Clarke’s grandfather needs help getting his computer fixed. “We reached that age too. We want to take what we do seriously and have a career — and to eliminate the things that get in the way of that. If you don’t die at 27, you can do a lotof shit.”

An excerpt from the upcoming album “Ordinary Corrupt Human Love”...

Tue, 29 May 2018 10:17:37 -0700

An excerpt from the upcoming album “Ordinary Corrupt Human Love” coming out on July 13, 2018 on Anti Records
Pre-order HERE

Night Shift w/ Deafheaven on NTS Radio

Thu, 17 May 2018 11:07:59 -0700

NTS Radio joined by Deafheaven for a special edition of Night Shift.
Listen HERE

From the album, “Ordinary Corrupt Human Love” out on...

Wed, 09 May 2018 10:20:37 -0700

From the album, “Ordinary Corrupt Human Love” out on July 13, 2018 on Anti Records
Visit Deafheaven.com for pre-order

JUL 11 Phoenix, AZ @ Crescent Ballroom
JUL 13 Dallas, TX @ Gas Monkey Bar N’ Grill
JUL 14 Austin, TX @ The Mohawk
JUL 15 Houston, TX @ White Oak Music Hall
JUL 17 Orlando, FL @ The Social
JUL 18 Atlanta, GA @ The Masquerade
JUL 19 Carrboro, NC @ Cat’s Cradle
JUL 20 Richmond, VA @ The Broadberry
JUL 21 Washington, DC @ 9:30 Club
JUL 22 Philadelphia, PA @ Union Transfer
JUL 24 Brooklyn, NY @ Brooklyn Steel
JUL 25 Boston, MA @ Royale
JUL 26 Montreal, QC @ Theatre Fairmount
JUL 27 Toronto, ON @ The Opera House
JUL 28 Detroit, MI @ El Club
JUL 30 Chicago, IL @ Metro also w/ MONO (Japan)
JUL 31 Milwaukee, WI @ Turner Hall
AUG 01 Minneapolis, MN @ Cedar Cultural Center
AUG 03 St. Louis, MO @ The Ready Room
AUG 04 Lawrence, KS @ The Granada
AUG 05 Denver, CO @ The Oriental Theater
AUG 07 Salt Lake City, UT @ Metro Music Hall
AUG 08 Boise, ID @ Neurolux
AUG 10 Seattle, WA @ The Neptune Theatre
AUG 11 Vancouver, BC @ The Imperial
AUG 12 Portland, OR @ Wonder Ballroom
AUG 14 San Francisco, CA @ August Hall
AUG 17 San Diego, CA @ Brick By Brick
AUG 18 Los Angeles, CA @ The Wiltern

All dates with Drab Majesty & Uniform supporting

With 'Honeycomb,' Deafheaven Matches Its Expansive Promise

Wed, 18 Apr 2018 13:12:35 -0700

Full feature by Lars Gotrich via NPR

The secret of the pearl’s beauty is secretion: Layers and layers of calcium carbonate and conchiolin form over a microscopic intruder in a process intended principally to protect the mollusk’s internal domain, but also produces a gift for the patient pearl fisher. Deafheaven has spent eight years layering its exquisite and extreme sound, its eureka moment of gauzy black metal most realized on Sunbather and adventuring beyond with 2015’s New Bermuda. It’s the latter that reached more ears, but sometimes felt unformed in its sonic array — still something to behold, but not quite ready to be broken open.

The first single from the metal band’s fourth album, Ordinary Corrupt Human Love, offers a gift for the patient Deafheaven fan. The first four minutes of “Honeycomb” will feel familiar, as cascades of blissful and furious riffing erupt over euphoric blast beats and George Clarke opines on the Argentinian writer Julio Cortázar with his characteristically piercing roar. But then, “Honeycomb” breaks open.

Where Deafheaven once lept into its far-reaching influences with wild abandon, here the band considers the triumphant arena-rock of Smashing Pumpkins and the introspective repetition of Red House Painters with equal weight. Kerry McCoy, ever the thoughtful guitarist, sounds most at home in these solos, ditching the pyrotechnics of New Bermuda for melodic lines that conform to the song’s natural wave. Its 12-minute running time may seem superfluous, in need of an editor, but “Honeycomb” stretches out into its corners with a knowing wisdom, slowly building Deafheaven’s metallic expanse.

Deafheaven starts a U.S. tour in July. Ordinary Corrupt Human Love comes out July 13 via Anti- Records. Track list below:

Deafheaven “Honeycomb” // Best New Track on Pitchfork

Wed, 18 Apr 2018 09:14:29 -0700

Feature by Jayson Greene via Pitchfork

“Honeycomb,” Deafheaven’s first new song since 2015, offers the band’s fans no surprises. From its opening seconds, it sounds as if the shoegaze/black metal outfit has been screaming uninterrupted behind some thick, soundproof curtain ever since we left them. This may be for the best; if you’ve worked up a sound this oceanic, you might as well luxuriate in it for a good long while. And so on “Honeycomb,” they do just that.

For 11 minutes, the song flies weightlessly down its well-paved path without hitting a single bump: The guitars still move from major to minor in shuddering bursts, George Clarke’s shredded vocals still peel away from the music as if to escape it. In the long, dreamy outro, in the chiming guitars and light tambourines (which could be from a folk-rock record), we are still given a vision of the electric guitar as a holy instrument, firing deep into the imagination. Deafheaven aim us toward a vanishing point only they see, a nexus where all guitar music melts together in an ecstatic blur. If they seem to be repeating themselves somewhat, maybe it’s because we’re still not there.

Deafheaven 2018 North American Tour Announced

Wed, 18 Apr 2018 09:07:07 -0700

JUL 11 Phoenix, AZ @ Crescent Ballroom
JUL 13 Dallas, TX @ Gas Monkey Bar N’ Grill
JUL 14 Austin, TX @ The Mohawk
JUL 15 Houston, TX @ White Oak Music Hall
JUL 17 Orlando, FL @ The Social
JUL 18 Atlanta, GA @ The Masquerade
JUL 19 Carrboro, NC @ Cat’s Cradle
JUL 20 Richmond, VA @ The Broadberry
JUL 21 Washington, DC @ 9:30 Club
JUL 22 Philadelphia, PA @ Union Transfer
JUL 24 Brooklyn, NY @ Brooklyn Steel
JUL 25 Boston, MA @ Royale
JUL 26 Montreal, QC @ Theatre Fairmount
JUL 27 Toronto, ON @ The Opera House
JUL 28 Detroit, MI @ El Club
JUL 30 Chicago, IL @ Metro w/ MONO
JUL 31 Milwaukee, WI @ Turner Hall
AUG 01 Minneapolis, MN @ Cedar Cultural Center
AUG 03 St. Louis, MO @ The Ready Room
AUG 04 Lawrence, KS @ The Granada
AUG 05 Denver, CO @ The Oriental Theater
AUG 07 Salt Lake City, UT @ Metro Music Hall
AUG 08 Boise, ID @ Neurolux
AUG 10 Seattle, WA @ The Neptune Theatre
AUG 11 Vancouver, BC @ The Imperial
AUG 12 Portland, OR @ Wonder Ballroom
AUG 14 San Francisco, CA @ August Hall
AUG 17 San Diego, CA @ Brick By Brick
AUG 18 Los Angeles, CA @ The Wiltern

All Dates with Drab Majesty & Uniform

Deafheaven’s new song, “Honeycomb”.

Tue, 17 Apr 2018 10:28:12 -0700

Deafheaven’s new song, “Honeycomb”.

Deafheaven Ready New Album for 2018 Release // Pitchfork

Tue, 30 Jan 2018 16:39:39 -0800

Deafheaven Ready New Album for 2018 Release

The follow-up to 2015’s New Bermuda is due later this year

Photo courtesy of Deafheaven

Deafheaven are making their next moves. The metal band posted a photo on their social media platforms of the members recording in a studio with the caption “2018.” See the photo below. Deafheaven’s representatives have confirmed with Pitchfork that the band are currently working on a new album at 25th St. Recording in Oakland with their frequent collaborator, producer Jack Shirley. They’re “expecting” to release the album sometime later this year via Anti-. The upcoming record follows the band’s 2015 album New Bermuda. Last year, Deafheaven’s George Clarke contributed to a “Lost at Sea” remix with Youth Code and Chelsea Wolfe to support Planned Parenthood.

Full article via Pitchfork

‘Sunbather’ named most critically acclaimed album of 2013 // Business Insider

Wed, 26 Jul 2017 14:35:20 -0700

‘Sunbather’ by Deafheaven is amongst incredible company on ‘The Best Album Of Every Year Since 2000” list. Full article via Business Insider.

Deafheaven Announce Shows With Danzig

Wed, 19 Jul 2017 10:48:32 -0700

Deafheaven will be playing three shows alongside Danzig and Vamps. Dates Below.

SEP 22 - San Francisco, CA @ Warfield Theatre
SEP 23 - Las Vegas, NV @ Brooklyn Bowl
SEP 25 - Tempe, AZ @ The Marquee

Ticket links coming soon.

Deafheaven on Rolling Stone's 100 Greatest Metal Albums of All Time

Wed, 21 Jun 2017 12:24:58 -0700

Deafheaven guitarist Kerry McCoy and singer George Clarke grew up together in Modesto, California – they met in high school when McCoy spotted Clarke wearing a Slayer T-shirt, while Clarke noticed McCoy was wearing a Dead Kennedys patch. Naturally, they had to start a band. That blend of influences has made Deafheaven one of the most polarizing and controversial metal bands of recent years. As McCoy put it, they claim “this triangle of extreme music, experimental music and very sad indie rock. That’s what we were into.” The San Francisco band blew up with their second album Sunbather, the 2013 breakthrough that defined their expansive style of black metal. In fiercely emotional tracks like “Dream House” and “The Pecan Tree,” they weave in elements of post-punk indie noise bands like Mogwai, along with shoegaze elders like My Bloody Valentine or Slowdive. “Sunbather musically and lyrically sums up what we were thinking; it’s very hopeful and bright and fast and energetic,” McCoy said. “Lyrically, it’s very yearning.” And it sounds like nothing else, though Deafheaven make no apologies for that. As McCoy told Rolling Stone, “That mixture of influences has kind of always been our thing, much to some people’s annoyance." R.S.

Via Rolling Stone

Choice Set of Day one: Deafheaven // Invisible Oranges

Tue, 09 May 2017 11:23:45 -0700

Deafheaven. The complaints I’ve heard over the years about Deafheaven run the gamut from too emo, too contrived, not true enough, etc. They are a polarizing band, but I’m entirely convinced this comes from attempts to peg them as something they aren’t. The shoegaze-y, effect-laden weight of Deafheaven’s sound can hardly be categorized as black metal alone. Tonight, vocalist George Clarke’s schizophrenic movements were the focal point, fluctuating more extremely than ever between manic orchestra conductor and serpent-like seductor. Stinging guitars and merciless drumming cut through the auditorium like a knife.

A palpable post-Deafheaven buzz continued into the wee hours. The night swirled into a maze reunions with old friends, clinking glasses and excitement for the three days to come.

Full article at Invisible Oranges.

Photos courtesy of Diana Lungu.

Deafheaven Add Mexico Dates w/ MONO To North American and European Tour

Tue, 09 May 2017 10:00:44 -0700

Deafheaven has added two Mexico dates with MONO to their ongoing European and North America tour. See below for a full list of announced shows. Tickets available HERE.

DEAFHEAVEN LIVE 2017

May 16 Niagara Falls, NY @ Rapids Theatre #
May 17 Pittsburgh, PA @ Stage A #
May 18 Grand Rapids, MI @ The Pyramid Scheme
May 19 Toronto, ON @ The Garrison
May 20 Hamilton, ON @ Club Absinthe
May 21 Columbus, OH @ Rock on the Range
May 26 Silverado, CA @ Blackest of Black Fest

# w Gojira and Code Orange

June 17 Clisson, FR @ Hellfest 2017
June 19 Lausanne, CH @ Le Romandie
June 20 Zurich, CH @ Bogen F
June 21 Milan, IT @ Circolo Magnolia - Solo Macello Fest
June 24 Madrid, ES @ Download Fest
June 30 Guadalajara, MX @ Foro Independencia +
July 1 Mexico City, MX @ El Plaza Condesa +

+w MONO

Deafheaven Guest On ‘Records In My Life’ // Northern Transmissions

Mon, 17 Apr 2017 11:23:12 -0700

We met with George Clarke, lead singer of the band Deafheaven, while we were in Boise, Idaho for Treefort Fest 2017. George kindly shared with us some important albums, that influenced his and the band’s sound, as well as offering a couple surprising records for us to check out! Some of his favourite albums include titles by Simon And Garfunkel, Slayer, and Philip Glass.

Deafhaven, play April 20th in Tilburg, Netherlands. The band’s latest release New Bermuda, is now out on Anti Records.

Via Northern Transmissions.

Deafheaven adds dates to Europe and North America

Fri, 24 Mar 2017 09:00:42 -0700

Deafheaven has added dates in European and North America around their performances at Roadburn, Hellfest, Rock on the Range, and more. See below for a full list of announced shows. Tickets available HERE.

DEAFHEAVEN LIVE 2017
Apr 20 Tilburg, NE @ Roadburn Festival *
Apr 21 London, UK @ Koko
Apr 22 Leeds, UK @ Brudenell Social Club *
Apr 23 Glasgow, UK @ Saint Luke’s
Apr 24 Manchester, UK @ Gorilla
Apr 25 Birmingham, UK @ 02 Institute
Apr 26 Cardiff, UK @ Tramshed
Apr 28 Wiesbaden, DE @ Schlachthof
Apr 29 Meerhout, BE @ Groezrock Festival *
May 01 Prague, CZ @ Lucerna Music Bar
May 02 Berlin, DE @ Bi Nuu
May 03 Leipzig, DE @ Taubchenthal
May 05 Copenhagen, DK @ A Colossal Weekend *
May 06 Krems, AT @ Donau Festival *

* w/o Youth Code

# w Gojira and Code Orange

June 17 Clisson, FR @ Hellfest 2017
June 19 Lausanne, CH @ Le Romandie
June 20 Zurich, CH @ Bogen F
June 21 Milan, IT @ Circolo Magnolia - Solo Macello Fest
June 24 Madrid, ES @ Download Fest

DEAFHEAVEN Rig Rundown // Premier Guitar

Wed, 22 Mar 2017 17:13:58 -0700

Rig Rundown via Premier Guitar

Interview with RBMA Radio

Tue, 07 Mar 2017 15:49:02 -0800

After growing up together in Modesto, California as self-professed bratty metal upstarts, vocalist George Clarke and guitarist Kerry McCoy moved to San Francisco in 2010 and formed Deafheaven, a band whose contrasting mixture of metal and post-rock has made them both a success story and a curiosity for critics and fans alike. After recording their four-track demo, the duo became a five-piece band, signed up to Deathwish Inc. for their debut album Roads To Judah and took their strange new sound on the road.

After the strains of touring led the three new recruits to leave, McCoy and Clarke released their second LP, Sunbather, in 2013, a watershed release for the band with its lush shoegaze and even pop-leaning elements. Their third LP, New Bermuda, came in 2015, on Epitaph sister label ANTI. Rotating new band members in recent years, Deafheaven’s reputation for physically intense live shows and a “fuck you” attitude to metal convention has seen them contemporarily aligned with the new “North American Black Metal” sound (alongside groups such as Wolves In The Throne Room and Liturgy) – an innovative blend of black metal vocals and suspenseful, cathartic ambience. In this condensed excerpt from their Fireside Chat with Frosty on Red Bull Radio, McCoy and Clarke spoke about the band’s rapid success, the trials of touring and preserving their 20s through Deafheaven’s three albums.

Growing Up in Modesto

KERRY MCCOY

There’s an equidistant triangle between Modesto, Sacramento and San Francisco – they’re each about 90 miles from each other. While Sacramento and San Francisco are great places to live and grow up, Modesto, not so much. It’s part of Northern California, but as a culture it’s what’s known as a “bedroom community.” It’s a place that’s got bad pollution, but the rent is really cheap and it’s close enough to the Bay Area, so people will commute to work jobs there for higher wages and then come back home to Modesto at night. I think because it’s not actually in the Bay Area, or not actually part of a major city – I don’t want to slack off people who live in Modesto – but it sort of has a redneck vibe.

GEORGE CLARKE

It’s still a small town, even though there was a lot of cultural influence, especially in the punk scene, coming from the Bay at the time. To its credit, there was a decent amount of our kind of people living in Modesto, but the goal was always to get out after high school. San Francisco was the city where everyone hoped to leave for.

KERRY MCCOY

I remember the exact day George and I met, somewhere in the middle of 9th grade. He had just moved up from Bakersfield to Modesto. It was a rainy day, everyone was huddled underneath the awnings, but being the typical moody metal teenager that he was, he was sitting in the open rain by himself in a Slayer t-shirt. I was way into punk at the time, Slayer was the only metal band that I liked. I saw him and went up to him and was like, “Cool Slayer shirt.” He saw my Dead Kennedys patch. We complimented each other and started hanging out.

Finding Fans

KERRY MCCOY

The whole shoegaze/black metal, or post-black metal thing, was being done ten years before we were a band. We just started doing it and found people coming to our shows wearing Planning for Burial shirts, or kids that were into Mount Eerie really liked us. We were still an insanely small band at this time, like, could not get a hundred people to come see us. It was those kids who really had their ear to the ground on that kind of thing. From early on, I think most of them have stuck with us.

GEORGE CLARKE

Because we came from that same world. It was pockets of people that were into blogspot and weird lo-fi MediaFire records from 15 years ago that archived these things. This blogosphere is where we found our first broad audience.

KERRY MCCOY

The people that inhabit this triangle of extreme music, experimental music and very sad indie rock. That was what we were into. At that time, in 2010-11, we were listening to a lot of shoegaze, like Chapterhouse, Swervedriver, Slowdive, My Bloody Valentine, and a lot of post-rock. A lot of Mount Eerie, a lot of Microphones. Grouper. That whole reverbed-out, almost to a noisy experimental state, of sad, desperate acoustic singer-songwriter stuff. There was some beauty in it.

The Rise of Caligula

KERRY MCCOY

Bands can’t really be a democracy. For us, it’s never worked. Everyone can contribute ideas, everyone can have their input, everybody brings riffs to the table, but at the end of the day there has to be somebody who has a clear vision of the way that things are going to go. That’s the way Deafheaven works. That’s what was wrong with [the band] Rise of Caligula. It all came together in this big jumbled soup where nothing really sounded like anything at all. We all worked so hard on it and it was so hard to be in that band because nobody gave a fuck. When we started Deafheaven people just instantly started liking it. This was before Facebook had pages for bands. We had a personal profile, literally “Deaf Heaven,” first and last name, and added all the cool metal people of the Bay Area. We got a bunch of messages back like, “Who the hell is this?”

GEORGE CLARKE

We would just never respond and keep it really cold.

KERRY MCCOY

We posted our demo, just like, “Here’s the band.” It would come up in people’s Facebook feed. It sort of worked. People would listen to it and we’d get another message like, “Who is this? This is really good.” We started getting show offers. It was like, “Oh. It’s not this nonstop uphill battle of getting people to like your band. If people like it, they’re going to like it from the very beginning.” We had this lineup all of a sudden and started playing shows. [George] had a Bandcamp linked to our email, so we’d get these emails that said “Jonathan from Flinzer has bought your record demo for this much,” or whatever. We got one that said “Tre at Deathwish Inc. has bought your album demo for $5.” We were like, “Dude, what the fuck is this?” The next day it was like, “Jacob Bannon at Deathwish Inc. has bought your album demo for $5.”

GEORGE CLARKE

The next thing I really remember is I was at school, in between classes, and Tre [McCarthy] called my phone. I was walking around campus and we were kind of just talking shit, getting to know each other. He wanted to know a lot about the band. He was like “Oh, thank God you sound like a nice guy and you guys look normal, I thought you guys were going to look like total weirdos.”

KERRY MCCOY

I remember I worked at Ben & Jerry’s on Haight and Ashbury and I was like, “Can I take my lunch early? I’m getting a call.” [George] said, “Deathwish wants to put our record out.” I was like, “Man, we’ve played like eight shows and this is already happening?”

Trials of Touring

KERRY MCCOY

We do our first European tour with Heirophant in February 2012, which is a dream come true, even though it’s freezing and we’re sharing a van with nine people. It’s literally the best time we ever had. We come home from that, do a four-day tour with Whirl out to South by Southwest, and a two week tour with Alcest out to the East Coast, and a show playing with Converge in Rhode Island. Then we fly out to Prague and do six weeks with Russian Circles in Europe, after just doing Europe in February. Three-and-a-half straight months of touring.

GEORGE CLARKE

It breaks you down way more than you think it’s going to.

KERRY MCCOY

Before we tour with Russian Circles, Trevor [Deschryver], our first drummer, quits. We find Corey in San Diego to fill in for that. Nick from Whirl kind of drops out, and Joey from Whirl kind of fills in for him on those tours. We come home from that and we have a new drummer, we have a fill-in guitarist who’s kind of down, but not really, and we have a bassist, Derek [Prine], who at this point is losing steam.

GEORGE CLARKE

Derek was putting so much money into the band because he was the only one that really could.

KERRY MCCOY

He was the only that had money this whole time. At this point he’s realizing that he’s not really that comfortable. We love going on tour because when we come home, we’re sleeping in a living room and we’re eating on food stamps. Derek has his own house in Oakland, has a girlfriend there, has this great life, comfortable job, lots of money. We get home in May, and Derek winds up doing his own thing. Corey does his own thing, and me and George kind of just sit in a room for five months writing guitar stuff. I have this loop station, I start working on stuff. It’s going well because we’ve had so much time to sit there and play guitar that there’s all these riffs that I have saved up. These riffs wind up becoming Sunbather, essentially.

Sunbather musically and lyrically sums up what we were thinking; it’s very hopeful and bright and fast and energetic. Lyrically, it’s very yearning. It’s us having gotten a taste of how fun international touring is, we’re now friends with people who are in successful bands, their job is their band. We see all these guys, we’re playing all these big shows and it’s fun, then we got to come back home to working at Whole Foods and sleeping in a corner. We still have a record deal and could be a lot worse off. We’re living in San Francisco, single, young. But what that record is about is wanting to get that last push. “We’re almost there, can we just get that?” That’s what that record signifies. The record came out June ’13. We were at home literally on the iPad that my mom got me for my birthday, watching Sunbather blow up and get Best New Music on NPR, everybody talking about us and every outlet having an opinion about it.

GEORGE CLARKE

I stopped doing this a long time ago, but this is the time where you’d Twitter search yourself, you know? You can see all these things coming up and keep in mind, in 2013, when Pitchfork and NPR were covering metal, they were covering Agalloch, they were covering Yob. These were the bands that we wanted to be in arena with. We had come from these weirdo pockets. At the time, to be a metal band featured on a website like this, where there’s only a select few writers advocating for it, was a huge deal.

The Sunbather Effect

KERRY MCCOY

Because Sunbather was an insanely successful record that everybody loves, you have this terrible stressful conundrum of, we don’t want to write the same record over again, and we want this next record to be heavier, but are people going to fuck with it? Are they going to not like it? We have so much less time to do this and we want the songs to be shorter. There are all these things going into it and it winds up just being this nightmare. George and I are waking up in the middle of the night with night terrors about the record failing. Long story short, we hammer out New Bermuda. It’s the longest time we ever take to record, I think a total of 12 days, which is still shorter than a lot of people. We put it out and people like it, again. I don’t know… Not what we expected.

GEORGE CLARKE

New Bermuda is weird for me. I love everything that we’ve done, it’s a very important record. I think, lyrically, it’ll end up being the one that’s the most personal to me, but it reminds me of that time when we were writing it, and so it always just feels like, “What would have happened if we had more time?” I know whatever we do next, New Bermuda will feel like an in-between. I also think that those three records, Roads To Judah, Sunbather and New Bermuda, serve as a time, and whatever happens after that trio will always be grouped together. That’s me from age 20 to age 26, performing the records throughout until I’m 29. Those three records will be my 20s. Whatever we do next I think will feel very apart from those three albums.

By Frosty on March 7, 2017

(via Red Bull Music Academy)

DEAFHEAVEN

Hear “Canary Yellow” from the upcoming album “Ordinary...

Deafheaven 2018 EU/UK Tour

A Day In LA With Deafheaven // Stereogum

Loud Love : A Day In LA With DeafheavenThe California screamers open up about real life, baby ducks, and ‘Ordinary Corrupt Human Love’

An excerpt from the upcoming album “Ordinary Corrupt Human Love”...

Night Shift w/ Deafheaven on NTS Radio

From the album, “Ordinary Corrupt Human Love” out on...

With 'Honeycomb,' Deafheaven Matches Its Expansive Promise

Deafheaven “Honeycomb” // Best New Track on Pitchfork

Deafheaven 2018 North American Tour Announced

Deafheaven’s new song, “Honeycomb”.

Deafheaven Ready New Album for 2018 Release // Pitchfork

Deafheaven Ready New Album for 2018 Release

‘Sunbather’ named most critically acclaimed album of 2013 // Business Insider

Deafheaven Announce Shows With Danzig

Deafheaven on Rolling Stone's 100 Greatest Metal Albums of All Time

Choice Set of Day one: Deafheaven // Invisible Oranges

Deafheaven Add Mexico Dates w/ MONO To North American and European Tour

Deafheaven Guest On ‘Records In My Life’ // Northern Transmissions

Deafheaven adds dates to Europe and North America

DEAFHEAVEN Rig Rundown // Premier Guitar

Interview with RBMA Radio

Growing Up in Modesto

Finding Fans

The Rise of Caligula

Trials of Touring

The Sunbather Effect

**Loud Love : A Day In LA With Deafheaven**
The California screamers open up about real life, baby ducks, and ‘Ordinary Corrupt Human Love’