Even though Sunbather saw more success than Roads To Judah, is their actually less pressure to write the next album?
GC: I was just talking to somebody about that. I think when we get to the actual writing, and there are dates booked, there’s going to be stress, but I do feel more confident. I think with Sunbather we have found our own stride. With the demos and other stuff, we’d write something and say “oh that sounds like that Burzum riff, that’s awesome”, now it sounds like Deafheaven. Sunbather really hammered that point home. I feel like we have so much more direction than before. We may have the balls to do the weirdest shit.
KM: We’ve already started coming up with riffs for the next record and there’s not nearly the amount of second-guessing. We’ve both done this three time before and people have dug it, so you think, “maybe I’m not a phony, maybe people really like the songs.”
CO: So now you’re free to go as far off the reservation as possible
GC: I think musically yes. I think it’s put us into an area where we can do anything. With the combination of genres, I it has definitely put us into a power position where we can move this way and move this way. I don’t feel visually or musically there are any limits. If people can stomach Sunbather, then I can feel the weight of it lift.
Much as been made of the pink record cover. Was it purposefully defiant?
GC: No, it wasn’t that. I just felt that was true to the sound of the record, and the themes of the record. It would have been so much more dishonest to confine the artwork to something that was more catered to a metal audience, then to what I thought the art should be, which is sleek and minimal. You notice the cover, but it’s not a focus. If I’m listening to a Violence record, I’m listening to the album, but also looking at a giant mouth, which is cool but wouldn’t fit our record. It would have been so lame of us to hire some crazy intricate artist to create it for us.
It would have been more dishonest than doing a straight metal cover.
KM: That’s the exact point. That’s not the kind of band that we are, and we’re not going to cater to that to get less shit. If we had put a bunch of inverted crosses on the front of it, I feel like we would have gotten half the amount of shit.
GC: It’s just a matter of staying interesting. If anything else the point of this band has been to stay true to ourselves. If in ten years I’m into intricate gore, then we’ll have an intricate gore cover. If we get to the point that we’re putting out contrived art, feel free to drag my name through the mud. That’s why we never argue with that stuff.
Who is inspiring the next album? Who are you jamming to now?
KM: The bands we’ve always talked about, about how cool it would be to be seen as that band, is like Isis and Jesu, and for the next record we’ve been talking about Swans. The next step we want to do something like Swans and Godflesh’s Streetcleaner, like our take on that. We’ve even been talking about throwing in a Wilco type sensibility.
GC: But with Ulcerate type death metal. That’s a record I’ve been hugely into. That band really pushes boundaries.
You might get more backlash.
GC: Aggressive music is really like that. If we were another Best Coast everybody would be like “Hey great.”
KM: Yeah. I need another one of these.
GC: To be honest I think that Deafheaven has it’s own voice and we do our own thing, but I would never say we’re reinventing the wheel.
KM: People who talk the most shit act like there’s never been another band doing this kind of basterdization, and it’s like this has been happening for so long, I just thought you knew about it.
Last question. You’re both Morrissey fans. Was the title of the new album taken from his song “The Lazy Sunbathers?” Thematically they both share the same ideas.
GC: (Laughs) No. I had a friend, our friend Angie, who texted me saying “Whoa a little Morrissey angle” and I was like No, no. Like anything that song probably sat in my brain for a while but that was purely off seeing somebody sunbathe and I thought, “sunbather, that’s very simple”. The word itself, it just opened up so many things. It’s been brought up multiple times, but no it wasn’t the direct influence. However I will take the Morrissey connection.
Deafheaven are currently on tour. Keep up with them on Facebook, their official site, on Twitter and Deathwish Records.
