Deafheaven-Frontmann George Clarke über die Entscheidung, sich vom Metal zu entfernen

Deafheaven haben vor kurzem ihr neues Album „Infinite Granite“ angekündigt und sogleich eine erste Single namens „Great Mass Of Color“ veröffentlicht. Mit „The Gnashing“ steht jetzt auch schon der zweite Appetizer bereit und wie man bereits anhand der ersten beiden Stücke merkt, entfernt sich die Band zunehmend von ihren früheren musikalischen Wurzeln.

Frontmann George Clarke ließ in einem neuen Interview mit Pitchfork nun wissen, dass das eine ganz bewusste Entscheidung und Teil der Entwicklung der Band war. Und auch seiner eigenen, da er sich laut eigener Aussage jahrelang als einer der schwächeren Teile der Kombo gefühlt habe.

George Clarke über den Soundwechsel von Deafheaven auf dem neuen Album

„…It was all an attempt to be as maximum as possible so people didn’t feel that they were lacking in a listening experience just because the vocals had changed so dramatically. My singing on earlier records was really haphazard. This felt a lot more calculated. I don’t view myself as a natural singer at all. It has taken a lot of work. It’s funny, even though I’m not using my voice in nearly as extreme a way as I usually do, I would often be exhausted at the end of the day. It was like learning a different instrument. It made the whole thing a lot more fun, to be honest with you.

Maybe around [2015’s] ‘New Bermuda‘, I felt like everyone was expanding on their instrument and getting better at what they were doing. And in certain ways I was as well, but there’s a part of me that’s always felt like the weak musical link. I wanted to bring more to the table—and also to service the lyrics differently.

It’s interesting for the song that we put out [‘Great Mass Of Color‘], so many people have been commenting to me about the lyrics, which is very kind. It’s something I didn’t get a lot of before even though I’ve taken the same amount of time on those lyrics. It’s just that the delivery is so much friendlier. There are all these little things that are personally satisfying about the switch, and that personal satisfaction was the reason we did it in the first place, you know?“

Der Umgang mit den Kritikern

Im weiteren Verlauf deutet er heraus, dass andere Acts auch ihren Stil geändert und sich von einem härteren Sound entfernt haben, diese jedoch nicht so viel Kritik einstecken mussten.

„…We were joking the whole time about wanting this to be our ‘Kid A‘ [Radiohead album], where we filter our own sound through a different medium—because I still think that that record sounds like them as much as this record still sounds like us.

And then we looked at bands like Cave In or AFI who made major label jumps and stylistic changes and what that meant for them—how we feel about it now and how we felt about it at the time. Those are conversations that we had, but there is no specific model.

Even with ‘Kid A‘, bringing up that record while making your own is more a tool to just give yourself confidence, knowing that someone somewhere did this before. And perhaps it’s not out of the realm that you could try something that’s a bit of a 180 and not have it sink you.

…During the writing process, we noticed that the riffs weren’t amping up into metallic sections—and everyone was okay with it. It wouldn’t have made sense to make a different record, or it would have been very ham-fisted.“

„Infinite Granite“ erscheint am 20. August 2021. Alle Infos zum neuen Longplayer findet ihr hier.

Beim bevorstehenden Album handelt es sich um den nunmehr fünften Full-Length-Player von Deafheaven sowie die erste Platte, die über Sargent House erscheint. Der Vorgänger „Ordinary Corrupt Human Love“ erschien noch über Anti-, einem Schwester-Label von Epitaph.

Ihr Erstlingswerk „Roads to Judah“ warfen Deafheaven 2011 in den Ring.

Foto: Robin Laananen / Offizielles Pressebild