Each new Deafheaven album has seemed to react against the last, changing moods and textures without ever sacrificing their heaviness. Infinite Granite might be their most startling gesture yet: though elements can be traced back to 2018’s Ordinary Corrupt Human Love, it takes those elements and expands them to album length. Infinite Granite, really, is not a metal album. It’s the album where the shoegaze entirely supplants the black metal in their blackgaze equation. For almost the whole record, George Clarke sings clean – there are, literally, seconds of growling on the album; on Villain, for example – and the guitars eschew the violence of metal for something just as intense and crushing in its own way, but dazzling and beautiful and – yes, this is shoegaze, so we’re dropping the e-bomb – ethereal.
Ever since their 2013 release Sunbather, much of the discourse surrounding Deafheaven is whether or not they are a “metal band.” It’s difficult to plot their discography on some sort of metal vs. not-metal axis. Their past releases have the blast beats and guttural screeching vocals of a black metal band, but their instrumental arrangements borrow more from bands like My Bloody Valentine and Echo the Bunnymen than Immortal and Dimmu Borgir. They don’t look or dress like a metal band. In fact, whenever I deep dive into the Reddit or Twitter threads and read about Deafheaven, there’s a lot of discussion about frontman George Clarke’s hair and how it reflects on the band.
House of Lull . House of When is the debut solo album from vocalist Alexis Marshall of Daughters. In 2018, Daughters released You Won’t Get What You Want, a monumental industrial, noise rock record. Marshall is also a poet, and he credits writing poetry with inspiring him to make a solo record.
When Deafheaven got huge, a swath of black metal purists went to war while diehard fans exalted them as be-all-end-alls. But their best album yet, 'Infinite Granite,' is—as singer George Clarke insists—"just a record"
Mutoid Man have announced a permanent new bass player: as speculated, the power trio — also featuring Stephen Brodsky and Ben Koller — will be rounded out by Jeff Matz(High On Fire). Having amicably parted ways with previous bassist Nick Cageao in 2019, Mutoid Man are thrilled to unveil Matz as their new member. Mutoid Man will debut the new lineup at this year’s Psycho Las Vegas — see them on the main stage at Mandalay Bay on Friday, August 20th at 2:25pm. 
Ioanna Gika, the international Greek singer who enchanted us with her voice at the Dior show in Kallimarmaro, is inspired by Greece and watches what is happening on the planet, actively participating.
