From their 2010 inception, it was immediately apparent that San Francisco’s Deafheaven were no ordinary black-metal band. While frontman George Clarke could unleash the cavernous, throat-shredding screams that define the genre, his clean-cut appearance and minimalist fashion style owed more to Ian Curtis than any corpse-painted growler. And in co-founding guitarist Kerry McCoy, the group possessed a musical director eager to invest black metal’s blast-beaten ultraviolence with a cinematic sweep that owed as much to post-rock and shoegaze. With their momentous 2013 breakthrough, Sunbather, Deafheaven became unlikely crossover sensations in the wider indie-rock world by channelling black metal’s apocalyptic rage into stirring symphonies of noise that were absolutely breathtaking in their emotional intensity. Over subsequent records, Deafheaven continued their gradual drift from bludgeoning black metal toward soothing shoegaze (earning a Best Metal Performance Grammy nomination along the way for 2018 single “Honeycomb”), before fully embracing their inner Slowdive on 2021’s glistening Infinite Granite, wherein Clarke completes his evolution from nightmarish shrieker to gracefully melodic dream weaver.