Mastodon @ Fillmore
Mastodon x Deafheaven
10.14.26
Deafheaven
“I’m reliving Saturn eating / His flesh is everything of mine” - Deafheaven “Winona”
Oh me oh my, Deafheaven made me cry.
This was my first time shooting but second time seeing Deafheaven, the black metal shoegaze five-piece from San Francisco, California, my first time was just last year in April at the Gothic, but this time they played the Fillmore Auditorium (easily one of my favorite venues to shoot; shutter dragging those chandeliers is so nice). Admittedly, both times I’ve seen them, I’ve cried. There are a lot of core memories of closing down at a bar I used to work at, where my coworker and I would be blasting their critically acclaimed album Sunbather in full as we shut down for the night. Hearing them live at the Gothic made me nostalgic for that time, and hearing the titular track alongside ‘Dream House’ made me shed a tear. This time ‘Winona’ tugged on my heartstrings, which was their final song of the set.
Deafheaven rides a blurry line between shoegaze and black metal, often being labeled as a blackgaze band. I was introduced to them a couple of years ago via their more shoegaze-y album (though it still contains black metal elements) Infinite Granite, at the time, it scratched that shoegaze hardcore itch I had gotten from Pianos Become the Teeth’s Drift as well as Touche Amore’s Lament. I felt like, coming from a more shoegaze-driven background, it is the perfect handshake into their discography, giving you a taste of what the band is capable of, with tracks like ‘Villain’ and ‘Mombasa’ having that raspy screamo vocal element (commonly associated with the black metal genre), blended beautifully into a reverberated, overdriven soundscape. Since that introduction, I’ve fallen in love with their more black metal-leaning albums, Sunbather and most recently Lonely People With Power, with some of my all-time favorite tracks from the band being off of the latter.
They opened the night with ‘Incidental I ’, which acted as a perfect blend from Alcest’s set, with a slow-build, synthesizer-heavy instrumental introduction that climaxes perfectly into the heavy, overdriven, compressed high-tempo intro of ‘Doberman ’, with the more metal-leaning, crash-cymbal-loving ‘Magnolia’ following suit. The entire seven-song set comprised mostly of songs off Lonely People with Power with the exception being the recent single ‘Hunter’ from their recent surprise EP At Work in the Fields of the Bomb, coming out last Friday, making its Denver debut towards the end of the set.
The stage presence was atomic, especially that of George Clarke, the vocalist of Deafheaven, who utilized the entirety of the stage, screaming around, inciting circle pits of lost shoes and belongings from attendees, and bringing the level of energy in Fillmore Auditorium up to a higher degree for Mastodon to take the reins later in the evening.
Mastodon
The house lights dimmed, the photo pit opened, the crowd grew quiet, and Ozzy Osbourne’s ‘Crazy Train’ played over the house speakers in full. I can’t say I’ve ever seen a band utilize a five-minute song as a walk-out song before; typically, it's the intro and a verse, then walking out on the first chorus, not an entire song in full; however, it definitely worked. There were many members in the audience singing along as loud as their lungs could.
Though significantly less familiar with Mastodon’s discography, they delivered an incredible show. Walking out to a synthesizer crescendo as a slow zoom in on the album art for their recently released Marrow Deep laid on an LED back panel and front of the risers for their drummer and keyboardist. The heavy metal five-piece from Atlanta, Georgia ripped open the evening with ‘Barbarians Blood’, a four-and-a-half-minute blend of psychedelic rock vocals paired with a heavy metal, bass-drum-heavy soundtrack.
I was predominantly surprised to see Troy Sanders (bass and vocals) take center stage looking like a metal Santa Claus, but he had an outstanding vocal delivery accompanied by a dominant part in the rhythm section. I think one of the more interesting elements of Mastodon is trying to identify who is singing during the various parts of the set. For most of their first song, it felt like the vocals were split relatively evenly between their drummer, bassist, rhythm guitarist, and keyboardist.
They kept the crowd incredibly alive during the entirety of their set. Between every song, the audience was full of raised hands clenched in a tight sign language rock-on, catching their breath from moshing, building a great sense of community within the Fillmore.
