Deafheaven played Royale – 11/3
If we’ve met, you’re probably aware of my feelings on Deafheaven. The California-based black/post/gaze/whatever-metal band have been one of my favorite working acts since the release of their 2013 breakthrough Sunbather, and I talk about this frequently. They released their third record, New Bermuda, in October and hit the road this month with Swedish metal crew Tribulation and heavy Japanese post-rockers Envy. I wouldn’t miss it for the world.
The first time I saw Deafheaven remains one of my favorite shows of all time. It was July 3rd, roughly a month after Sunbather’s release, at a packed and unfathomably overheated TT the Bear’s (R.I.P.). The band performed like they were headlining a venue 10 times the size of that 300 cap room, and that’s a ferocity they’ve carried with them ever since. As they’ve returned to Boston in the interim, it’s been gratifying to see them fill bigger and bigger rooms. They sold out The Sinclair on multiple occasions, and when they played Royale early last year as an opener for Between the Buried and Me (yeah, it was a weird show), it felt like a large portion of the crowd had come out to see them.
They headlined the room this time around, performing the entirety of the new record and two choice Sunbather cuts, along with last year’s one-off single “From the Kettle Onto the Coil.” While New Bermuda does feel somewhat less cohesive than its predecessor to me, while still being a very good record in its own right, the minor kinks were ironed out in the live setting. The songs definitely have a nastier, heavier bite in places, and lead shredder/songwriter Kerry McCoy, in tandem with second guitarist Shiv Mehra, did a bang-up job with the barrage of dexterously chugging riffs. Drummer Dan Tracy proved himself, yet again, to be one of the most insanely talented percussionists I’ve ever laid eyes on, forming a positively airtight rhythm section with bassist Stephen Clark.
And then, of course, there’s George Clarke, the band’s intense and perpetually black-clad vocalist. While the rest of the group can appear workmanlike on stage, Clarke is the catalyst for turning their shows into a cathartic, communal experience. He’s engaged constantly with the crowd, clutching hands, screaming in faces, crowd-surfing a minimum of once per show; he’s a frontman performing with the crowd, not just for them, and they love him for it. This night was no different.
Deafheaven have an excellent track record for choosing tour-mates, and that, too, has remained unchanged on this trek. Tribulation’s theatrically-minded heaviness, corpse paint and all, opened the night on an energetic note. The quartet whipped hair, stalked the stage and held instruments aloft to the heavens while ripping through a set of classic, gothic heavy metal (their last album was called The Children of the Night, after all). Envy followed up with massive-sounding set that traversed the more jagged edges of post-rock, crowned with Tetsuya Fukagawa’s exorcising vocals and animated stage presence.
Photographically, I wanted to do something a little different at this show from when I’d shot Deafheaven in the past. Previously, I’ve either been in a photo pit, a convenient but artificial divide for a band like this, or against a far side of the stage, just slightly removed from the central melee. This time, I decided to get in the thick of it as much as I could. Guarding my gear against crowd-surfers and the crush of hundreds of bodies pushing forward in waves for an entire set was challenging, but ultimately a lot of fun, and worth it for some shots I wouldn’t have gotten otherwise. The crowd was less intense during the openers (save for a few thrown elbows during Envy), but both of those bands were just as much of a blast to shoot as the headliners. Dramatic silhouettes and hair shots abounded, and this was definitely one of my favorite shoots in recent memory. Photos below.
