Live Review: Deafheaven, Hope Drone, The Matador

So it's finally arrived, the chance for pretty girls in polka-dot dresses to head out to their first ever “black metal” show. And like any good black metal show, the opening bands are diverse in sound and performance (that's a little black metal humour, every band at a black metal show should sound exactly the same, only able to be discerned by their unique configurations of corpsepaint/fake blood/bullet belts).

The Matador are first cab off the rank and show off their droney hardcore-tinged post-metal to an already busy Crowbar. Having picked up their fair share of support slots, The Matador seem to be continually evolving as a professional and consistently innovative live unit.

Hope Drone have obviously been spinning Sunbather in the practice space, and some of that record's brilliance has rubbed off on the dudes. The main support speed through a chaotic maelstrom of tremolo picking and noise passages and the near-full room hangs with them through the madness.

To start their show, Deafheaven's vocalist George Clarke is thrown from the crowd onto the foldback and busts open his ear. But the vocalist quickly picks himself back up, starts playing around with the blood pouring out of his ear and the band launches into their set. As the band play, the furore that's followed them since the release of Sunbather all becomes a bit laughable – that people would grow to be so up in arms when the San Franciscan outfit released a BM record with a pink front cover, and that scene kids who wouldn't know Transilvanian Hunger from A Blaze In The Northern Sky are so adamant to call Deafheaven a black metal band so as to bolster a perception that they have explored the dankest, ugliest, corner of the heavy metal universe – it all seems rather dumb.   

Nobody invested in the Deafheaven debate seems to want to split the difference — that this is a good band doing interesting things, and are figuring out a way to make elements of extreme music palatable, in a way that hasn't been seen since Isis called it quits — but that seems to be the point of tonight's set. As they extend Sunbather's pretty drone passages while Clarke drags his gloves through the blood spreading over his face, the band divorces themselves from any sound or scene. Their performance is about presenting a juxtaposition of lurid and beautiful sounds in a powerful and theatrical fashion.

Black metal's saviours or not (not), Deafheaven's set tonight proves that these guys are still deserving of the praise heaped upon them. And who knows, maybe their show tonight will lead to excellent USBM outfits like Nachtmystium, HORSEBACK and Cobalt enjoying a wider exposure amongst the pretty-girls-in-polka-dot-dresses set. Maybe it won't though.