Deafheaven Concert-Goers: Please STFU

<rant>

This past Friday, I ventured to one of my favorite venues in the city of Chicago, Bottom Lounge, to check out San Franciscan black metal outfit Deafheaven.  I had seen Deafheaven play once before; a sold out show at Subterranean, another Chicago venue who hasn't seemed to grasp the positive impact of air conditioning.  Thus, seeing Deafheaven play at SubT in the middle of summer when the place was packed to the gills was not very conducive to a pleasant concert experience.  However, Bottom Lounge had never steered me wrong before so I was convinced that my ideal live Deafheaven experience would be fulfilled.  It surely was and then some. The band played all of their latest album, Sunbather, in its entirety and even threw in a brand new song that was pretty solid.  Along with George Clarke's piercing screams, the guitars and drums were thunderous.  The band couldn't have performed any better, IMHO.  However, there was something amiss, which had nothing to do with band. Rather, all the ire I eventually accrued over the course of the evening was aimed towards my fellow concert-goers.

We'll Do It Live Fridays - Deafheavenitely

Fridays here at Brutalitopia mean only one thing.....We'll Do It Live!  For the uninitiated, We'll Do It Live Fridays (or WDILF for short) is a celebration of live performances.  It's one thing if a band sounds good in the studio but the true test is whether or not they can deliver the goods live.  WDILF tries to bring to light specific bands and/or specific performances that truly shine through in the live setting.

See who made the cut this week after the break. 

Skinny Jeans and Blast Beats

Let’s play a quick game.  It won’t take long, and it won’t be hard.  Here’s how it will work: I’m going to ask you a question, you think of the answer, and then we see if you’re right or not.  Sounds fun, right?  Let’s give it a whirl.  Who won the World Series in 1984? Did you say the Detroit Tigers?  If you did, you were right.  Here’s another one, just for kicks: Which came first, Blackwater Park or Leviathan?  Blackwater Park you say? My, you’re good at this.  Ok, enough practicing, let’s break out the real deal.  What’s a name for a sub sect of society that is pretentious, overbearing, and spiteful toward those who think differently about pop culture than they, dresses in a manner deemed to be “weird” to the mainstream, and often views music, movies, et al in terms of absolutes rather than subjectively?  Cue the “Jeopardy” theme… ok.  Got your answers?  Raise your hand if you said “hipsters.”  Well that’s cute, and somewhat accurate, but it’s not what I was going for.

Altar of Plagues - Teethed Glory and Injury

As a fan of black metal, I find myself using plenty of different adjectives to describe the sounds of the genre.  A few of my favorites: “filthy,” “godless,” “muddy,” “dense,” “soul-crushing,” “bleak,” “hopeless,” and “devastating.”  You can make fun combos like “devastatingly godly” or “soul-crushingly heavy” that really speak to the music.  But grammar lesson aside, the reason I bring up black metal descriptors is that on Teethed Glory and Injury, the third full-length from Ireland’s Altar of Plagues, the band seems to be trying to encapsulate all of them.