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40. Sunbather - Deafheaven (2013)

Metal / Not Metal

Where to start with Sunbather? It’s obviously a metal album. It’s obviously not a metal album.

Over seven tracks and nearly sixty minutes, Deafheaven flipped metal music on its head with their 2013 release Sunbather. It’s an album that defies categorization, mostly because to do so would require the creation of a whole new category. The shoegaze subgenre got thrown around a lot in the weeks and months following the albums release by critics and writers trying their best to tie it down somewhere. There are definite elements of shoegaze here, brilliantly executed, impeccably layered, imposing, aggressive, yet somehow soothing. But it’s clearly a metal album, right? And a black metal album, at that? Vocals are shrieked, growled and otherwise indiscernibly emitted amidst, above, beneath and around the wall of sound laid down by pummelling drums and churning guitars. But, no, tracks like “Vertigo” aren’t metal at all, until they become undeniably metal later, even segueing into a Pallbearer-esque guitar solo. The listening experience is wholly disorienting on so many amazing levels.

Sunbather is a headfuck because it exists outside of the timeline of metal and is in no way beholden to the unwritten rules that govern it. Deafheaven managed to blaze new ground, braving uncharted waters to find an island paradise amidst the endlessly redundant sea of metal. And on this island lived a strange new creature that possessed all the properties of metal without being metal. The album is an anomaly, a singularity, it’s a masterpiece that isn’t just good because it’s completely new and captivating, but it’s also technically perfect, so immaculately constructed that it’s nearly as impressive from a scientific perspective as from a musical one. It’s metal that Mozart would have loved.

*image; cover art for the album Sunbather by Deafheaven