Last year, a band from San Francisco called Deafheaven released an album called Sunbather. Pitchfork called it “a modern classic,” it sold tens of thousands of copies, and even reached Billboard charts. All this would be a moderate success for a typical rock band on the cusp of making it big, but Deafheaven did it as a black metal band. A wonderful shoegaze-infused black metal band. George Clarke, vocalist, interviewed below, gives insight on what it’s like to scream your way to fame.
SP: On your new single “From the Kettle Onto the Coil” you’ve sort of changed up your vocal style. Was that for endurance? Or maybe just mixed differently?
George Clarke: We’ve been playing a lot of shows and I think when you practice you obviously get better at what it is you’re doing and I think that’s definitely the best vocal performance I’ve done on record so far. I really just attribute that to using my voice a lot more and being able to control it in different ways and better ways and create new sounds with it and hit pitches higher than I’ve hit before and lower than I’ve hit before.
SP: There are a lot of lower pitched growls on that track. It’s all your vocals?
Clarke: Yeah.
SP: Heavier.
Clarke: Yeah, I was talking to a friend recently and it’s funny because when you do something like a single as opposed to an album, you don’t have to fit it in with anything and it’s sort of like it’s standing on its own and doesn’t have to be congruent with anything else. We were able to play around a lot more. It’s sort of an avenue that we used to kind of test the waters with different ideas. We wanted to retain our sound but try something a little heavier and a little more metal-oriented and see if it could work, and I ended up being happy with it. I don’t know if it’s where we’re gonna go, by any means, but it was a fun thing to play around with.
SP: Are you working on a new album?
Clarke: We’re doing so much touring right now and it’s so hard to write when we’re thinking of everything else, so we’re going to finish out the year, do our shows and then really sit down and focus on the new record which will hopefully be out next year. We have ideas, that always is flowing but we haven’t like, sat down and completely written anything.
SP: Going back to talking about Sunbather, from my Midwestern perspective, I think even the title and concept of the album are immediately interesting, I mean, it’s called Sunbather, and I really think that’s something only a California metal band could come up with. Is there anything besides that that is distinctive about California metal or black metal?
Clarke: I think that firstly with black metal California definitely has its own thing. I think that a lot of which stems from early on with Weakling and Leviathan and bands like that. The atmosphere is also really harsh sometimes so sound just evolves weirder, with all these weird branches, bands like Botanist, these bands that sort of push the envelope with black metal, and I think in that respect California is very much on its own just in terms of innovation, whether it be the early 2000s or now.
SP: What was it like coming up as a band in the San Francisco area? Was there a scene you were part of?
Clarke: Yes and no. We’ve always sort of put it out there that we won’t be a part of any scene specifically. We never really strived to be a part of a certain group of people or anything like that. There are various DIY scenes in the bay area, not only black metal but hardcore and even thrash and things like that. We never really wanted to do that but that being said we got to play with a lot of great bands early on and I think that one of the things that I love most about what we do is that we’re able to play with a large variety of bands, so we kind of had our hand in a lot of different pots. We’re sort of on the outskirts. We’ve never been directly involved with anything, we’ve played shows and made friends. I’m not printing flyers or anything. I think those things are important, don’t get me wrong, but as a band we never wanted to be too involved, but that was our experience. But we have a lot of good friends in all those things and it’s positive.
SP: That’s probably worked out for your music too, not feeling tied down to anything, not needing to play a certain way or else be ostracized.
Clarke: We’ve always just said we’ll be cool with bands that are cool to us. There’s no reason to have some sort of fake boundary, you just play for yourself.
SP: From your perspective, after all the success of Sunbather, what effect do you think that will have on your lyrics?
Clarke: Honestly not much. I think that there are always things worth writing about. When we wrote Sunbather, obviously there are a lot of themes that have to do with want and desire and jealousy and poverty because that’s where I was at the time. A lot of those issues have amended themselves, which I’m extremely thankful for, so I’m not going to write a record that’s necessarily about that again, but there’s always things to write about and I feel inspired all the time so I don’t feel nervous about it, or like I’ve ran out of material. If I had, I’d be a really bad one-trick pony!
SP: By now you’re probably sick of hearing questions about the debate between black metal purists and your fans, but I wanted to ask you about that whole debate in general — has it gotten in the way of your ultimate vision or goal for the band?
Clarke: No, absolutely not. That’s such a superficial debate to begin with that I can’t imagine it actually affecting me. I was surprised by it early on, and I sort of paid attention to it because I thought it was kind of interesting, seeing different viewpoints, but that was years ago, the conversation’s made itself so old by this point that I just don’t even mind it, and our shows do well and I know that we have our audience and that’s all that I really care about.
SP: Because you weren’t the first band to do black metal crossover music, and it’s interesting to me that there was such a hubbub over it when you guys hit it big.
Clarke: Yeah, exactly, you nailed it, on the head, or whatever that fucking expression is. You got it. And that’s why I’ve always been surprised because we’ve always been really open about our influences and especially early on. American black metal and the entire scene for the last half-decade has been hugely influential on us. It’s not the only thing but it’s very prominent but I’ve always said that we were never creators of it but for some reason people wanted to put that on us.
SP: Any music you’ve been listening to lately?
Clarke: Yeah, a little bit. Actually, this is sort of biased, but a couple of guys in our band have this record coming out called, they’re called Creepers, and it’s really, really good. It’s like a shoegazey, prog thing. I don’t know how to describe it but it’s really spacey and really catchy. I’ve been listening to that a lot, and to the new Pallbearer a lot.
SP: Any US black metal bands that you like a lot?
Clarke: Yeah, absolutely, the ones that I mentioned earlier, the new Panopticon is awesome. We’re actually getting to play with a band this tour that I’ve been a fan of for a long time called False. I’m stoked to see them play. Bastard Sapling too, that record is so fucking good. That is probably my favorite American black metal record to come out this year.
Check out Deafheaven on Sunday evening when they perform alongside American Football, Liturgy and many others at the Highdive Outdoor Annex. Grab your tickets here.