deafheaven
New Bermuda
ANTI- Records
Release Date: 2 October 2015
Review by Thomas Riley Lanyon
How do you follow up the most acclaimed record of 2013? How do you meet the expectations of so many when your last record was Sunbather? If you’re San Francisco’s, deafheaven, you write, record, and release New Bermuda.
New Bermuda is a rarity. It’s the kind of album that only comes around once every few years or so, the kind of album that can change your physicality. If you allow yourself to get lost in what deafheaven have created, you will feel your stomach turn and your skin hum to life. Walls of breakneck drumming and seething, wretched vocals crash into moments of euphoric bliss, where wistful, dreamy guitars conjure wondrous spaces of atmosphere and beauty. And while this might not be anything new for deafheaven, it all feels more focused on New Bermuda, like their hybrid of black metal, post-rock, and shoegaze is now fully realised.
deafheaven had so much room for failure with New Bermuda; however, they’ve followed up a virtually flawless album with an even better one. Put simply, New Bermuda is a masterpiece of metals modern age.
