Deafheaven – Roads To Judah (2011)

May 5, 2024

I found Roads To Judah, whilst engaging, to not be as fully realised as the vision of “blackgaze” the band perfected with Sunbather. The songs are sprawling epics much in the same vein, but if anything, having less screamo / shoegaze elements in the music and instead being more “nice” regular black metal (like Alcest, yknow?) actually does harm rather than good. Never thought I’d be calling for more of either of those two genres in my black metal I’ll be honest with you, but here we are. I understand of course, that Roads To Judah came first, and this was a more formative version of their sound, so I have taken that into account whilst rating this one.