The Sunbather Monologues

This is going to offend some Scandinavians, but I didn’t really know shit about Black Metal music until I found Deafheaven in 2014 or 2015. Black metal is listed as an extreme subgenre, which is true in both a literal and figurative sense. Literally speaking, it’s an eventual outgrowth of Extreme metal which is itself a cluster of subgenres. Think of it this way: if Metal is a hen which has laid say 10 different eggs, Extreme metal is the family that one of those chicks eventually grows up and gives birth to. Black metal, then, is the grand-chickie of one of the members of Extreme metal’s eventual family. Does that make sense? And in a figurative sense, Black Metal is far away from the central node of the Metal genre but not over the ocean. Put into geographical terms, if Metal is Wichita, Kansas then Black Metal is Santa Monica beach.

Which in many ways is a pleasant place to find yourself. It’s very much still connected to its roots, but it has vistas and moments of active rest that are not unlike a day spent in the direct sun goofing off with your homies or loved ones if you sit with it long enough and hypothetically are trying to cram it into the trunk of a terrestrial metaphor. But I digress. Black Metal isn’t for everyone necessarily, but I would argue that Deafheaven’s opus in the sub-subgenre Sunbather is. It’s strange, dark rock opera mixed with moments you might hear at a Steve Lacy concert, which is a way of saying that it functions as the tip of several different icebergs. And as someone who heavily advocates for getting your taste buds’ shit rocked every 6 to 9 months with something you aren’t currently used to, this is something both incredibly palatable and functionally palate cleansing, like when expensive restaurants give you the tiniest possible scoop of mint substance on the tiniest possible spoon.

But that isn’t to say that it functions as a means to some other end. It’s very much a destination and maybe the best Metal-adjacent album that’s been made in the last decade. The fact that it came out in 2013 and still pops up in everyday conversations with friends and with music talking heads is saying something, partially because of the impact radius it made with its release and partially because of the incredible difficulty it’s created for any other contenders who have tried to replace it.

I love this album a lot, and it was a wonderful decision to revisit it this morning while trying to plow through some weekend work tasks. Anthony Fantano’s 12 minute synopsis of its place in Metal history is well worth a watch, and you can find the link to it below for whatever streaming service you use.