Deafheaven are not going anywhere. Love them or hate them, the San Francisco based extreme music force is a musical juggernaut. From their early demos, through Roads To Judah, Deafheaven have piqued the interest, and the ire, of the music world. Their 2013 release Sunbather landed on a dozen or more best of lists for the year.
I caught up with the masterminds behind Sunbather, Kerry McCoy and George Clarke, at a recent live show. With the success of the album established, I wanted to talk to them about the new dawn for Deafheaven, as well as living through the backlash, and what the plan is for the next album. McCoy and Clarke pull no punches, and make no excuses.
CRAVEONLINE: Were you as shocked as everyone else at the mainstream praise for Sunbather?
George Clarke: I think it’s interesting. It’s certainly something we never planned for. At the time of writing the record we just wanted to put out something we were proud of. Something that exceeded the quality of our last releases. When something like that comes in it feels good. I think it is really unique when a band like ours, playing what we play, has garnered so much attention. I’m just happy with the way things are going. We work really hard. The rest of it is icing on the cake.
There was no shortage of metal records in 2013. Why the gravitation towards Sunbather?
GC: For the Sunbather release there were a ton of factors. Factors that exceed the record’s quality itself. The music is there, the packaging and the lyrics were there, and we put a lot of attention into every detail. I also think it could be a right place right time situation. We had a lot of support. People caught onto that energy and that spread. It’s a multitude of different things.
Kerry McCoy: It’s not cool to say this, but I think a lot of it is the modern independent music media, who are really afraid of being seen as not relevant. When a lot of people started saying, “this is a great record”, I think the media had to listen to us, or get caught up on it in order to stay relevant. We did work really hard on this but I would be lying if I said we did this all on our own.
GC: I think we’ve always handled ourselves in a really professional way. We’re very humble relaxed people.
KM: If I heard it (the record), based on what I listen to everyday? The songs are there. This isn’t some fluff that’s built up out of nowhere. Cleary the song writing is very expansive. Cleary we really listen to metal. As much as people want to make fun of our haircuts or the pink record cover or whatever, the songs are there. Anybody who gives it a chance will see that.
Getting into the backlash. Many folks see what you do as a piss take, almost like you’re making fun of metal.
GC: Making fun of metal?
KM: People are going to say what they are going to say. If it was a joke, or we were making fun of metal, I wouldn’t have spent six months of my life writing a seventeen-minute metal song.
GC: I wouldn’t have slept on a floor for three years of bullshit touring.
KM: We get that we changed our sound to become more popular. We started the sound to make it big. I always tell those people that on the internet, or the Nuclear War Now message board, it may seem like we’re some huge thing, but if you go to a festival, and see bands like us or Russian Circles, bands playing a slightly different style of music, and then you see a band who started six months ago but plays “indie rock”, that band will be getting paid ten times more and play five hours later. If we were in this for any other reason besides liking metal and wanting to play metal, I would have started a different kind of band. (Laughs).
GC: If I really wanted to be an indie pop start I’d shit something out.
The two of you wrote Sunbather alone. Based on the success, will Deafheaven remain just George and Kerry?
KM: Never again. It was probably the most stressful six months of our lives. While Roads To Judah did not do half as well as this record, people still dug it, and so trying to follow up on that, and hearing about the sophomore slump, and bands who released something and then fell off, knowing friends who had gone through that. Not having come that far but still feeling like we had so much to lose, we both felt like we had to write the best record we could possibly come with. In theory that’s what you’re supposed to do every time, but in this case we just started questioning everything we did.
GC: There’s no second opinion.
KM: We’d write a riff and think, that’s tight we’ll use that, and then a week later you’re thinking, is that good, can I make that better? Then you wind up over thinking it. The next record we’re going to relax on, and also write with Shiv, and Dan, Stephen, and everybody. That way it’s more of a collaborative effort.
GC: There’s something to be said about the fun of just jamming with somebody. When we were writing Sunbather, though there were fun times, like when a riff clicks, so much of the time writing the record was agony. We didn’t even have a drummer until a week before we recorded that record so up until then we were like (thumps a beat on the table and laughs). When you actually get into room with other people it makes writing music fun.
KM: It was fun and fulfilling but very stressful. George will do this thing where he says “I’m booking the dates for this time” just so we don’t spend forever writing the record, or we’re scared to put it out. While that’s helpful, we were trying to finish songs our third day in the studio. Just sitting in a room with a guitar writing lyrics.
GC: Yeah “Vertigo” is really pieced together.
