DEAFHEAVEN and ENVY at the Opera House, Sunday, November 1. Rating: NNN
From the moment he stepped onstage, Deafheaven vocalist George Clarke had the audience in the palm of his hand. When he wasn’t screaming and perched atop a P.A., the true frontman was conducting the crowd by punctuating the band’s cascading melodies with his own wild movements.
At times, his prowling the stage with clenched fists waving in the air looked incredibly goofy, but Deafheaven exist at that point where pure, unconditional earnestness straddles the line between affectation and candour. As the night wore on, their performance gravitated more and more toward the former.
As big and bloated as New Bermuda cut Baby Blue is, the band kept it somewhat grounded, sounding like black metal’s answer to November Rain. The same could not be said for Gifts For The Earth, which pushed their sound toward bland parody, a misstep they only recovered from with an encore of Sunbather and Dream House.
Openers Envy, all the way from Tokyo in a rare appearance, reprised their role as originators of Deafheaven’s combination of emotional post-hardcore and abrasive experimentalism, paving the way for Deafheaven with an incredibly focused and impassioned set.
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