Tristan Thompson *doesn’t* sign with Cavs, but reportedly alters contract demands
September 24, 2015All brown errythang: Browns to wear all-brown uniforms on Sunday
September 25, 2015I love having this space to talk every week with relatively no rules. This week I just have to talk about music, but like most things I end up talking about myself. I’m really self-centered in that way. Hope you guys all have a great weekend. While we’re waiting…
Deafheaven is the sound of heavy music all grown up…
I never felt like metal was supposed to be listened to in a cubicle at a Fortune 500 company, but that’s exactly what was happening in 2001 when I was a cubicle dweller. By the time I was faced with real responsibilities and the prospect of wearing a necktie every day, it just seemed too incongruous to think I’d be listening to something so unrefined and rebellious while partaking in the proper world. It’s all silly of course because this generation has decided to only grow up as much as they feel like, whether we’re talking about a style of music or a propensity to play video games obsessively. There was a stigma in my mind, and I’m guessing there was in other people’s minds as well. It seemed worth questioning what the world of heavy music would look like as the first real generation of fans aged into real live adulthood. It’s with this filter in mind that I’m compelled to talk about Deafheaven’s new album “New Bermuda” today.
I know Deafheaven won’t be for everybody, but it’s a real arrival for heavy music as an art form. Back when I was a kid I listened to death metal, most notably Acid Bath, and loved to listen to other bands with similarly brutal names that would garner shock value. Pig Destroyer, Cannibal Corpse, Dying Fetus, and Vomit Remnants are real band names and I know that because I listened to them. As I’ve grown older I look back at those band names and it can only make sense as through the same kind of filter where we can enjoy the Saw movies or Cabin Fever by Eli Roth. Horror films and death metal are the kind of like the gallows humor of their respective art forms.
Deafheaven are an amalgamation of genres of music from shoegaze, rock, post-rock, hardcore and black metal. They blend blast beats with melodic leads and screechy percussive vocals. They write songs that bleed in and out of each other so that when the album is complete it stands as a single work as well as a collection. They pit brutality and technical complexity against sweeping melody and soft beauty. There are so many things about Deafheaven that shouldn’t work, but because of where we are in time and place in the culture, it works perfectly.
Deafheaven is an answer to the question, “What happens when the metal and hardcore kids get to their 30’s?” I always wondered if I would outgrow my hardcore and metal roots. Would I always be able to listen to bands like Acid Bath? Would I find new bands in those genres, or would I just cling to the ones from my youth because they are familiar and relate to a specific time and place in my life? What I hadn’t counted on was a band growing out of that genre and doing something as phenomenal as Deafheaven’s last album, Sunbather.
I'm a 36-year-old driving around suburbia in a Toyota Sienna minivan listening to the new Deafheaven streaming on NPR.
— Craig Lyndall (@WFNYCraig) September 24, 2015
On Sunbather, Deafheaven spread out with really long, complex songs with multiple movements like classical songs. Instead of going the route of Marvel movie sequels and increasing the action by adding to length, Deafheaven ended up with a tighter, more compressed album. Five songs spanning nearly 47 minutes is a tightening up from Sunbather’s seven tracks and nearly 60 minutes of run time. Where Sunbather gave listeners some room to think, New Bermuda seems to ramp up the urgency. It feels more aggressive, more ambitious in terms of drumming and riffing. If Sunbather is a serious conversation, New Bermuda is the second part of that conversation where patience is running thinner.
As I said in the open, Deafheaven won’t be for everyone, but it’s for a whole lot more people than I ever thought would be talking about extreme music nearly 20 years after I graduated high school. Heavy music has arrived, much like its fan base, in middle age thanks to Deafheaven.
Talking music and sports with Martin Rickman…
I’ve had a really fun month of podcasting with all the guests and things I’ve been able to line up. It was another good week including podcasts with Jessica Forrester and Tony Mazur. I was also able to talk to Martin Rickman and it was really fun because he’s doing many cool things that I’m jealous of. Not jealous in a resentful way, but almost a more prideful way. Anyway, we talked about his recent work on CHVRCHES, Ludacris and college football for UPROXX.
A football Browns quarterback question for you…
Earlier this week I declared that the Browns should name Johnny Manziel starter on these pages. I had logic to support that preference, but even as Mike Pettine went the opposite direction, I wasn’t angry or anything. I was watching Mike & Mike recently and it was a full-blown debate topic for them with various guests. It seems that many are painting this as a contentious Cleveland rage-fueled debate, and while I’m sure there are some that would say “FIRE PETTINE!” I don’t get the sense that anyone’s really that worked up about it. In fact, it seems to me that Cleveland is actually being very mature about the whole thing. I’ve been largely pretty proud of Browns fans for not getting too carried away with hot takes and vitriol that has become our second nature.
Am I wrong? Let me know in the comments.
Your weekly moment of soccer zen…
This week’s is the most obvious highlight of all time. You can’t ignore when a dude scores five goals in about nine minutes of a soccer game. It’s luck, it’s skill, it’s nearly impossible. It’s everything we love about sports in general. We watch sports to see these kinds of things happen and as Cleveland fans you just hope it happens for you and not to you.
That’s it for me this week guys. Have a great weekend!
20 Comments
Great article, I’ll definitely check DeafHeaven out. For me, the band was Opeth. Bruising metal switching to jazz-influenced acoustic, often back and forth in the same song.
Don’t much care for new metal. No hooks. Cookie monster singers. Bleh.
Iron Maiden just dropped their new disc 2 weeks ago. WASP releases theirs, next month.That’s metal, to me.
Now, get off my lawn!
Cookie monster…never heard it that way but my sentiments exactly
I think ESPN gets all of their Cleveland sports news from Aaron Goldhammer and Tony Grossi. Seriously, not kidding. So whatever spin they put on the Cleveland Browns is the same narrative you’ll see in Tony’s columns and talked about on the Goldenboys on KNR.
Since the day he was drafted, I never got the sense that Browns fans were Manzealots. As I see it, the fans have taken a “show me something first” attitude, and with few exceptions, there’s been no clamoring for JFF. Sure, you’re always going to have a vocal minority calling for the back-up QB, but it’s no different with Manziel than it was with Brady Quinn or Colt McCoy.
Sometimes the media confuses media obsession for fan obsession. The former is obviously there, the latter hasn’t developed yet.
Robert Wuhl used to have a sports talk show.
His tagline was “It’s my job to make my opinion, your opinion.”
And their opinions are crafted to be nothing more than click bait.
So, I’d say this pretty much describes the MO for pretty much the entirety of sports media.
It’s not only national media that paints a false narrative of a QB debate raging in Cleveland. Yesterday Tony Grossi’s theme in print and radio spots was that poor McCown has no real experience surviving this supposed fan storm. And I’m thinking: Grossi is completely conflating the few but loudest tweeters and radio hosts grabbing low-hanging fruit with the majority “whatevs, Johnny’s gonna play now or later” attitude.
The truth is that no one’s fooled themselves into pretending this is a good team with anything at stake this year. No one has playoff hallucinations or chanted “Super Bowl” at training camp without irony. I mean, there’s probably less talk about Johnny this year than Josh Gordon’s urine last year. The QB choice is not exactly whether the aging legend Joe Montana or youngish, studly Steve Young is the best bet to bring home the Lombardi. It’s an aging career mediocre, a never-was, against an undersized, questionable guy fresh out of a completely wasted rookie season and rehab on a team that Pettine hopes is going nowhere rather than down so he can hang onto his job. Manziel made himself polarizing, ESPN’s favorite type of chew toy, and since polarizing is the best-seller they will run with that until a fresh high profile idiot drops into their toy basket.
should have read yours first and saved the typing.
JFF toned down the antics and attitude, and put his nose on the grindstone. I think we’ll all agree, that’s all we really wanted to see.
But, of course, that’s not a narrative that gets The Four Letter the ratings they want.
or Mike Pagel or Vinny Testaverde or Eric Zeier….
Ugh. I was at that game.
That’s all I care about. His talent is what it is, and the only thing deserving of scorn is either the Browns misjudging it or him wasting it.
I think they’d run with the “Redemption” narrative if and when he ever becomes a good QB on a good team. It’s one of the 4-5 facile media prefabricated angles.
Dear Craig,
Portal.
That is all.
The Bundesliga has thrown up the virtual Berlin Wall apparently, but here’s the last of those five Lewandowski goals, which was a thing of absolute beauty
https://vine.co/v/exmTX7p62Md
Today on PTI: “Browns fans pining for Brian Hoyer to return, hate the Plain Dealer, and think their beat writer should have been an Italian man.”
Tony Grossi is about the angriest I’ve seen anyone about the decision to start McCown, and it was still all about Hoyer. There are a few of the worst talking heads in Cleveland up in arms, but it’s because they need schtick to get by, and fan-baiting is easy schtick.
This 100%
I agree, and I think it’s because we have been through 15 years of the same song and dance. We are tired of it and just don’t care any longer.
KI has great taste in baby mamas: http://www.tmz.com/2015/09/23/kyrie-irving-child-support-andrea-wilson-texas-miss-texas/
Oh I think there is plenty of Manziel obsessionists one of the largest used to work for 92.3. But much of it, at least for Browns fans, is driven from “maybe this qb drafted in the first round will finally be the guy” more then anything.