Dearest Davenport: If you were at this show wearing a long-sleeve shirt and had dark hair pulled in a bun, I have something of yours, contact me.
San Diego metal icons Deafheaven graced the people of Iowa with their divine presence on October 9th, at the Capitol Theater in Davenport. This performance was a part of their massive North America & Europe tour following the release of their 2025 album, Lonely People With Power. They were supported at this show by Chicagoan metal band Harm’s Way and Texan hardcore newcomers I Promised the World. I Promised the World performed like house show, the stage might as well have been a basement and we were all friends together in the small crowd, watching two dudes skipping and hurling themselves down the runway of a pit while the singers above screamed and collided together on stage. Harm’s Way brought a violent overpowering set, industrial tones and performing metal in a way that felt like the burning taste of iron in blood. Both bands put on killer shows opening for Deafheaven, completely full of energy to loosen the crowd and intensify the stage.
Incidental I
“Are you a lonely person with power?”
Spotlights flitted to pierce into the audience, covering the deep blues of the shifting stage as five men walked out. Mechanical groans leaked out across the silence of the theater, soft plucking guitars built over an informercialic voice echoing:
“We need to talk. You need more excitement. You need something live. Real people to connect with. Explore your darkest thoughts. Confess your private desires. Experience the incredible.”
Metal rained a storming sound across the audience. From that moment on, the concert hall was flooded with energy between the band and audience. Black metal integrity rules that, ideally, music should never end. Songs overlapped into each other for nearly 20 minutes before a curt, “Davenport, how are we doing tonight?” from the singer, diving straight back into screeching vocals a moment later. Without further incident, add song names the first half of the set passed through in a clamor of noise. Much like the band’s discography throughout the years, the music played that night underwent constant evolution, the shifting waves of sound ebbing and flowing until pulling away completely. The band walked off stage, disappearing into an uneasy tension like the drawback of a tsunami. Silence.
Incidental II
“When you say, “Baby, come to me,”
Who am I, one who cannot see”
From beyond the empty stage, a quiet song began into the silence. A rasping woman’s voice echoes a slow spoken melody, accompanied by a guitar strum. This newfound quiet intimacy brewed instinctively discomforting, following the past hour of constant sonic onslaught. Static and groans encroached into the song’s soft melody, entering alongside the band as the five drifted back on stage in complete control of the growing anticipation. The tsunami wave loomed dead ahead. A final breath.
“I think I might be hiding from myself,
It’s so good to be alone, alone with someone else”
Lightning leapt out the sky and thunder erupted from the stage surface, the concert hall completely destroyed and replaced by pure noise. Singer, guitarist, and bassist stood raised above the crowd, leaning as the wave crashed into their wall of the most oppressive sound I have ever heard.
The show continued with a reinvigorated brutality, the torrent hurled into half-moments of pause until breaking down straight back to blistering sound. Controlled by blinding, tyrannical drums, the two guitarists pulled around and in-between each other, a brawling dynamic something in between synchronization and a fistfight. George Clark’s inhuman voice screeched into surreality, whispers and cries spun across the merciless pattern. He was a conductor, pulling the sound into existence and manipulating the wave by a movement of his hand. With each vicious swipe of Clark’s hand, the music shuttered and turned over, a living creature trapped in writhing death throes within his grasp.
In the past years, I’ve grown admittedly bored with metal. There’s certainly no lack of revolutionary artists in the genre, it’s an art undergoing constant change and reinvention across the world. Maybe I’m not going to enough good shows, but I just have not experienced any of those revolutionary out-of-body moments that I expect from quality music, until October 9th. Until Deafheaven, throughout the hundreds of shows I’ve seen, nothing came close to awakening the same feelings I had when I saw my first metal show with Lorna Shore at Deadwood. That was my first experience with live metal, my body exposed to the live wire intensity and new indescribable feeling that metal can fill your spirit with. This show reminded me what metal can be, and why I love it. Noise mixed into a concoction I had never experienced before as the sound boiled into a wholly new oppression that clutched at my nostalgia.
Shredding apart a sound through every moment, just to construct a new noise to tear into within the next breath, Deafheaven was a violence as new as it was familiar, dually creation and desolation.
Davenport, IA was one of the final stops on Deafheaven‘s U.S. tour, which will soon resume with an array of sold-out shows across Europe into December. I eagerly await the next album (even if it takes another four years) and for a chance to experience this band’s energy all over again. More information about upcoming shows across the Davenport/DSM area can be found here from First Fleet Concerts.
