The Fifth Desk · Evaluation
Act I · The Map
Deafheaven · produced by Justin Meldal-Johnsen · Sargent House · nine tracks
Mode
Shoegaze and dream pop with a post-rock sense of build, made by a band from extreme metal; longing stated with the force held back
Mythos
The descent into quiet and the return of the repressed, built in sound as the record’s shape; the cosmic and the bodily summoned in titles and given no figure
Phase
Nine tracks: an opener that states the new terms, a run of bright mid-tempo songs, a short instrumental at the hinge, two long expansive tracks, and a closer that grows from acoustic guitar to the return of the screamed voice
Presentation
Album; released by Sargent House on 20 August 2021, nine tracks in one sequence, produced by Justin Meldal-Johnsen; the band’s fifth studio album
Register
A clean, soft voice, often doubled and set back in reverb; chorused, delayed and clean-toned guitars layered into a bright mass; drums played with restraint; one passage of screamed voice and full heavy attack
Scale
One inward sensibility: an anxious self, the body, and a band’s own history, with the cosmic named in titles
Governing Proposition
A band whose language was rapture reached through violence states the same longing without the violence, in a clean, soft voice over bright and layered guitars, and finds that the longing, unarmoured, is smaller and more anxious than the noise had made it seem. For eight tracks and most of a ninth the screamed voice is withheld; at the end of the last song it returns, and the record discloses that the restraint was a held breath and the force had never left. The frame is built with care. Between its two ends the record is a run of songs in one shape and one voice.
Act II · The Essay
Movement I
The record begins by stating its terms. Shellstar opens on chiming, chorused guitars and a clean voice, and there is no blast beat under it, no tremolo picking and no scream. Then the chorus opens upward, in the major-key ascent that was always the bright half of this band’s sound. The listener is told in one song what has been kept and what has been put down: the swell remains, and the weapons are gone. Everything after depends on that announcement, and on the question it leaves open, which is whether the force that once drove the swell has been lost or only set aside.
Deafheaven’s earlier albums joined black metal’s tremolo picking, blast beats and screamed voice to the major-key swell of shoegaze and post-rock. Sunbather (2013) made the band’s name. Ordinary Corrupt Human Love (2018) let clean voice and slower, brighter passages into that language. Infinite Granite, the band’s fifth studio album, released by Sargent House on 20 August 2021 and produced by Justin Meldal-Johnsen, removes the black metal almost entirely. The band as recorded is George Clarke on voice, Kerry McCoy and Shiv Mehra on guitars, Chris Johnson on bass and Daniel Tracy on drums. The album as first released, nine tracks in one sequence, is the unit.
The turn is large within the band and small within the art. What is left when the black metal is cut away is shoegaze and dream pop with a post-rock sense of build, and both were long proven. The clean turn had been prepared by the previous album, and the move from blackgaze into shoegaze had already been made in the same field, by Alcest with Shelter in 2014. The stake was real all the same, and openly taken. A following that came for Sunbather was asked to follow a singer with a modest clean voice, and part of it did not. The swerve was away from the band, not from the art: it leaves one tradition for another that was already there.
Movement II
Great Mass of Color is the record’s most driven song before the close, and its closing section is its first full height. The drums drive and the guitars thicken into a wall, and for a few minutes the record sounds like a band that has kept its force and chosen where to spend it. The height is of one kind, the swelling lift of layered guitar, and it is the kind the record reaches most often. Shellstar’s chorus has already shown it; Lament for Wasps and Other Language, the long and expansive tracks of the second half, reach for a slower transport of the same sort and partly find it.
The making is strongest in the guitars. McCoy and Mehra layer chorused, delayed and clean-toned figures into a bright mass that never turns muddy, and their interlocking parts separate on close listening. The long builds are paced with judgement. Tracy, a drummer of exceptional speed in the band’s heavy language, plays here with restraint and precision, and what he is holding back is audible in the holding. Meldal-Johnsen’s production is clear and spacious, and the recording gives each layer its place without letting the mass thin. This is load-bearing craft: the record’s argument is carried by the sound the guitars make, and the sound is exactly made.
The same polish is charged against the record’s survival. The clean, wide production is of its moment to the ear in a way the band’s rawer records are not, and five years is a short span on which to weigh what will last. The form is whole and in print; the presence is real and narrow, held among the band’s following and among listeners to shoegaze and post-rock, with no life in broader circulation. Height comes several times and fully once. That places the record below m b v, at 7.7 here, a late shoegaze record by a band turning its own language, which rises more often and is made more surely throughout.
Movement III
The run from In Blur through Villain and The Gnashing is where the method shows its cost. Three mid-tempo songs in the same bright, reverbed mode, of similar length and similar arc, follow one another, each with a clean verse, a swelling chorus and a bright guitar coda. The Gnashing has the brightest guitar figure on the record; Villain is guitar-led and steady; In Blur is light and quick. Each is pleasant and well made, and none rises. The sequence would lose little without one of them, and they could stand in another order without changing what the record knows.
The voice is the reason the run sounds as one. For eight tracks and most of the ninth Clarke sings in a clean, soft voice, often doubled and set back in reverb. The voice is the instrument the record puts in front, and it is limited in range and colour: the doubling and the reverb support it, and over eight tracks it gives the songs a sameness of line that the guitars, however varied their figures, cannot break. This is the record’s central weakness of craft, and it falls exactly where the record has chosen to place its weight.
Yet the voice is also the finding. Set high and a little behind the guitars, soft and unarmoured, it is exposure rather than catharsis, and what it exposes is that the longing this band once stated through violence is, stated without it, smaller and more anxious than the noise had made it seem. That can be stated and holds. It is a disclosure made in sound more than in words. The words are set soft in the mix, and no articulated human or social condition is brought forward by them; what comes through is a mood of anxious tenderness more than a meaning, and the record’s truth stays at the level of the mood.
Movement IV
At the hinge of the record stands Neptune Raining Diamonds, a short instrumental of keyboards and texture, about two minutes long, with no guitar and no voice. It is the one breath of a different texture on the album and it earns its place. It is also the record’s restraint at its most complete: everything that marks the band as itself is withdrawn, and what remains is colour and drift. Placed at the centre of the sequence, it is a formal choice that works, a still point that makes the long tracks after it feel like a second movement.
The record’s law can be read from here. One rule governs it: longing stated in bright, layered sound, with force held back. Take the two most distant elements, this interlude and the screamed close of Mombasa, and both obey the rule. The interlude is the restraint carried to its limit; the close is the held force released at the one point the structure prepares for it. That the stillest and the most violent moments of the album obey the same physics is the record’s coherence. The range is moderate, wider than a shoegaze album’s by one heavy passage and narrower than the band’s earlier records, and most of it is one palette.
The titles reach further than the songs. A planet raining diamonds, a lament for wasps, a villain, a gnashing of teeth: the cosmic and the bodily are summoned, and none is given a figure, a story or a place. No particular is made to bear archetypal weight, because no particular is given. The orders the record holds are few. Consciousness is held, as an anxious, inward self; the body is present in the titles and in the release of the close; the band’s own history is held as a question its form carries. The family, labour, the state, history in the larger sense, the sacred and the natural order are absent.
Movement V
Mombasa closes the record, and the whole record is built to arrive at its last minutes. It opens on acoustic guitar and a quiet voice. It builds, slowly, through the band’s full sound, and in its last minutes the screamed voice returns, with the full heavy attack the band had withheld for eight tracks. The release is terrible and exultant at once, the dreadful sublime the band was made for, and it is earned by withholding. It is the record’s one great height and the one place where its form carries its knowledge entire: the song compresses the album’s argument, from restraint to force, into a single arc.
What the close discloses is that the restraint was a held breath. The old force was in the body all along; the eight tracks of soft voice were a choice and not a loss. The pattern is old, the descent into quiet and the return of what was buried, and here it is built in sound, as the album’s shape, not laid over it. Move the scream into the third track and the record would know nothing it did not know before. The title, an image of the enduring and the immovable set over a record of soft colour and drift, is resolved only here, when the force comes back. The pattern belongs to the band’s own course more than to a myth a listener could carry away.
The record is serious and well made, and it is held in Tier III by what its frame encloses. The scale is permitted rather than compelled; the middle is a run of songs in one shape and one limited voice; what it discloses stays a mood; the titles summon myth and build none; and its reach is small. It widened the band’s idiom, showing that the scream can serve once as structure rather than constantly as texture, without reorganising the field. It sat inside a wider revival of shoegaze among younger listeners that it did not lead, and no school or sound can be shown to have turned on it. It stands at 7.3, level with Punch-Drunk Love, another genre artist’s swerve into tenderness, and the frame it builds is the best thing in it.
Act III · The Twelve
Nine tracks, and the subtractive test finds a frame that is required and a middle that is not. Shellstar is required as the statement of the new terms: clean voice, chiming guitars, no blast. Mombasa is required absolutely, because the whole record is built to arrive at its last minutes. Great Mass of Color carries the album’s drive, and Neptune Raining Diamonds earns its two minutes as the one breath of a different texture at the hinge. The test bites in the run from In Blur through Villain and The Gnashing: three mid-tempo songs in one bright, reverbed mode, of similar length and arc, and the sequence would lose little without one of them. The scale is permitted rather than compelled.
Score: 7.3 / 10
Sound counts as fully as words, and what the record discloses through sound is real. A band whose language was rapture through violence finds that the same longing can be stated without the violence, and that the longing, unarmoured, is smaller and more anxious than the noise made it seem. The soft, doubled voice, set high and a little behind the guitars, is the finding: exposure, not catharsis. The return of the scream at the end of Mombasa discloses more, that the restraint was a held breath and the old force was in the body all along. What holds the figure is that what comes through is a mood of anxious tenderness more than an articulated human condition.
Score: 7.1 / 10
Elevation comes several times, mostly of one kind: the bright, swelling lift of layered guitar. Shellstar rises early, its chorus opening upward and telling the listener what has been kept from the old band, the major-key ascent. Great Mass of Color builds to a real height in its closing section, the drums driving and the guitars thickening into a wall. Lament for Wasps and Other Language reach for long, slow transport and partly find it. The summit is the end of Mombasa, where the scream returns after eight tracks of restraint: terrible and exultant at once, earned by withholding. In Blur, Villain and The Gnashing stay pleasant and level, beauty without height.
Score: 7.8 / 10
Myth is evoked faintly and built nowhere in figure. The title sets an image of the enduring and immovable against a record of drift and soft colour, and the track titles summon the cosmic and the bodily (a planet raining diamonds, a lament, a villain, a gnashing of teeth), but none is given a figure, a story or a place. What the record builds, in sound, is an old pattern: the descent into quiet and the return of the repressed, the buried voice coming back at the end. That is load-bearing for the album’s shape and is credited. It remains a pattern of the band’s own course more than a myth a listener could carry away without knowing the band.
Score: 6.7 / 10
The inheritance is the band’s own: a language that joined black metal’s tremolo picking, blast beats and screamed voice to the major-key swell of shoegaze and post-rock, and on which its following depended. The turn is large within the band. Blast beats, tremolo picking and the scream are cut away for eight tracks, and what is left is shoegaze and dream pop with a post-rock sense of build. The stake was real and openly taken: the audience that came for Sunbather was asked to follow a modest clean voice. What holds the figure is the path. Shoegaze was long proven, the clean turn had been prepared by Ordinary Corrupt Human Love, and Alcest’s Shelter had made the same move in 2014.
Score: 7.6 / 10
Would changing the form change what the record knows? At its frame, a great deal. The knowledge, that the force is held and not lost, lives in the withholding of the scream until the last minutes of Mombasa; move the scream into the third track and the record knows nothing it did not know before. Mombasa’s own arc, acoustic guitar and quiet voice to full attack, compresses the album’s argument into one song. Neptune Raining Diamonds at the hinge is a formal choice that works. The sequence is counted here, once. What holds the figure is the middle: the songs from In Blur to The Gnashing share one shape and could stand in another order.
Score: 7.6 / 10
Evidence first, and five years supply little; the axis can only be forecast for a record this young. The formal depth is real but modest. The guitar layers reward close listening, the two guitarists’ interlocking figures separate on return, and the end of Mombasa gains on each hearing as the listener knows what the whole record withholds. The semantic depth is thin: the words, set soft in the mix, give little to return to, and the middle songs mean on the fifth hearing what they mean on the first. The record has been reopened chiefly as an episode in the band’s course, a question about what the band is, and no study or reworking of it is known.
Score: 6.9 / 10
The field is the guitar album of the early 2020s, metal and shoegaze both. Intrinsic force is modest. The record shows that a band formed in extreme metal can make a full shoegaze record with the voice clean and the dynamic architecture of post-rock intact, and that the scream can be used once, as structure, rather than as a constant. That widens the band’s idiom without reorganising the field, since every element was established and Alcest’s precedent was seven years old. Achieved reach is scored with intrinsic force: no school or sound can be shown to have turned on it, and it sat inside a wider revival of shoegaze among younger listeners that it did not lead.
Score: 6.8 / 10
Survival is weighed over five years, on form, then presence, then fabric. The form is whole: the record exists as released, in print and on the streaming services. Presence is real and narrow: it is heard by the band’s following and by listeners to shoegaze and post-rock, and has had no life in broader circulation. The fabric is charged a little. The clean, wide, polished production is of its moment to the ear in a way the band’s rawer records are not. A span of five years, a narrow presence and a surface fixed to its time place it in the middle of what a young record can show, below m b v at 8.0 after thirteen years.
Score: 7.5 / 10
Command of the recorded medium, with the words weighed elsewhere. The guitar writing and its recording are the record’s strength and are load-bearing: Kerry McCoy and Shiv Mehra layer chorused, delayed and clean-toned figures into a bright mass that never turns muddy, and the long builds are paced with judgement. Daniel Tracy plays with restraint and precision, and the end of Mombasa shows what was being held. The production is clear and spacious, and Mombasa’s dynamics are managed exactly. The costs fall on the instrument the record makes central: George Clarke’s clean voice is limited in range and colour, often doubled and set back in reverb, and over eight tracks gives the songs a sameness of line. Below m b v at 8.5.
Score: 7.9 / 10
One law governs the record: longing stated in bright, layered sound, with force held back. Take the two most distant elements: Neptune Raining Diamonds, two minutes of keyboard texture without guitar or voice, and the screamed, full-force close of Mombasa. Both obey the law. The interlude is the record’s restraint at its most complete; the close is the held force released at the one point the structure prepares for it. That the most violent moment obeys the same physics as the stillest is the record’s coherence. The range is moderate, wider than a shoegaze album’s by one heavy passage, and most of it is one palette; narrowness is not coherence. The middle songs obey the law by habit rather than necessity.
Score: 7.7 / 10
Judged on what the record holds, with no discount for the album form. Consciousness is held: an anxious, inward self, in the soft voice and the mood of the songs. The body is present, in the titles and in the physical release of the close. A band’s own history is held, in a sense the rubric may not count as an order of reality: the record is about what this band is, and its form carries the question. The cosmic is summoned in titles and image and not held. What holds the figure at its level is everything else: no family, labour, state, larger history, sacred or natural order is held as subject. One sensibility, inward and close, holds two orders and gestures at a third.
Score: 6.4 / 10
Act IV · The Reckoning
7.3 / 10 · Final Average
Placement: Tier III · Major
Strongest Dimensions
The Made at 7.9, then The Sublime at 7.8 and The Inner Law at 7.7. Load-bearing guitar writing and a clear, spacious production that manages the dynamics of Mombasa exactly; elevation several times in part and once fully, in the return of the scream at the end of Mombasa; and one law, force held back, that the stillest interlude and the most violent close both obey.
Limiting Dimension
The Encompassed at 6.4: an anxious inward self, the body and the band’s own history, with the cosmic summoned and not held and every larger order absent. Then The Archetypal Deep at 6.7, myth summoned in titles with no figure to bear it and only the band’s own pattern of return built; Pressure on Tradition at 6.8, a widening of the band’s idiom on a proven path, with no practice shown to turn on it; and The Bottomless Well at 6.9, a modest depth of sound and little of meaning, forecast over five years.
The Necessity Cap is unmet: The Inevitable at 7.3 falls two tenths short of the threshold of 7.5. The Coherence Floor clears: The Living Form at 7.6, The Made at 7.9, The Inner Law at 7.7, each against 7.0. The Epochal Gate is unmet on all five: The Swerve at 7.6, The Imperishable at 7.5, The Unconcealment at 7.1, Pressure on Tradition at 6.8 and The Archetypal Deep at 6.7 each fall short of the bar of 8.5. The Universal Minimum is unmet at The Archetypal Deep, 6.7, Pressure on Tradition, 6.8, The Bottomless Well, 6.9, The Unconcealment, 7.1, and The Inevitable, 7.3, all below 7.5; The Encompassed, which it exempts, clears its own floor of 6.0 at 6.4. Two of the five summit conditions are met, the Coherence Floor and the Megethos Floor. The work stands where its aggregate places it: 7.3, from a sum of 87.3, in the band of Tier III, seven tenths short of the 8.0 at which Tier IV begins and short of the 9.0 that the summit requires, and the Necessity Cap would close the summit to it at any aggregate.
Basis · the album as first released by Sargent House on 20 August 2021, nine tracks in their original sequence, produced by Justin Meldal-Johnsen; judged from knowledge of the recording as heard; no recording or lyric sheet was in hand. The album as first released is the unit; no later edition, remaster or bonus material is part of the work. The band as recorded: George Clarke (voice), Kerry McCoy and Shiv Mehra (guitars), Chris Johnson (bass), Daniel Tracy (drums). Songs are cited by title, and no lyric is quoted. Facts that could not be verified are not given, among them the running time and the lengths of individual tracks, the recording location, personnel beyond the band and producer, which songs were issued before the album and when, the detailed content of the words, and the band’s later course.