Ones To Watch - September 10

TMN’s charts team predict the hottest new music breaking over the next quarter. From emerging acts to established artists, we’ll give you our industry tips, based on forthcoming album releases, past performance, inside info and a myriad of charts data.

Deafheaven

New Bermuda

(ANTI) Out October 2

Deafheaven are a band you’d be incredibly hard pressed to fit into the bracket of ‘commercial’ or ‘accessible’; they belong to a niche part of the already niche world of black metal, dealing specifically with blackgaze or shoegaze-influenced black metal. It’s because of this that the success of their 2013 LP Sunbather is even more impressive. With the majority of reviews being overwhelmingly in support of the album it achieved the title of the ‘best-reviewed major album of 2013’ on Metacritic. With a combined score of 92/100, it beat monumental albums like My Bloody Valentine’s m b v (87/100), Daft Punk’s Random Access Memories (87/100), Beyonce’s Beyonce (85/100) and Kanye West’s Yeezus (84/100). It proved that something so inaccessible by definition of genre can surpass the likes of commercial music’s latest and greatest. This is why follow-up album New Bermuda has a lot to live up to. 

First single Brought to the Water shows a significantly less shoegaze approach to songwriting. In an attempt to move towards alternative rock, guitarist Kerry McCoy recently told Rolling Stone magazine “some of the songs have more of a slow-core vibe – like, my take on Low or Red House Painters” as well as citing Morbid Angel and early Metallica as musical influences on the album.

It’s a move in an interesting direction which has opened the flood gates of musical exploration and songwriting. Then again, Deafheaven have never been ones to stick to the traditional shoegaze route. Though New Bermuda is unlikely to break any chart records or see much mainstream success, its set to prove the point again that music that is traditionally inaccessible or unsuitable for public consumption can still exchange blows with music created with mass consumption in mind. 

Travi$ Scott

Rodeo

(SME) Out September 4th

23-year-old producer and rapper Travi$ Scott released Rodeo earlier last week, the hyped follow up to his debut studio mixtape Days Before Rodeo. The album boats an impressive feature list including the likes of Future, 2 Chainz, Juicy J, The Weeknd, Chief Keef, Justin Bieber, Kanye West and many others. Scott’s music career originally came to fruition thanks to Kanye West’s G.O.O.D Music production wing Very G.O.O.D Beats, who signed him in 2012. Rodeo was preceded by the singles 3500 and Antidote, the latter of which received a service to alternative radio in Australia just this week. Though the week one sales figures aren’t being released until Saturday night, it’s expected that Rodeo will be debuting somewhere in the Top 30 of the ARIA Albums chart and will mark his first ever ARIA debut.