Lonely People With Power - Deafheaven: Review
Review by Lavender:
Deafheaven
are a once-divisive black metal band who made a huge splash in the first half of the 2010s by delivering a style of the notoriously insular genre that heavily incorporated elements of shoegaze and post-rock. That netted them tons and tons of critical acclaim, primarily centered around their 2013 masterpiece Sunbather, but also found them hit with some ultimately overblown backlash for their genre-bending approach to black metal. In the years since, they've spread those ambitions out even further with their previous album, 2021's Infinite Granite, shedding metal off almost entirely and focusing on dreamier indie rock and shoegaze. A year later, frontman George Clarke made heavy contributions to Alto Arc, an extremely experimental side project with a bizarre Mad Libs-style roster of contributors that I enjoyed a genuinely shocking amount. But now the band is back in full force, combining throttling black metal with expansive post-rock and dreamy layers of shoegaze, and it's one of the most triumphant returns I've ever heard.
That was a LONG introduction and unfortunately, the bulkiness isn't going to slow down anytime soon. This is a long record full of long songs which shift dynamically throughout their runtime. But to start, let's focus on a few tracks that are more content to throttle you from start to finish. That began with the album's lead single "Magnolia." It doesn't waste any time on anything other than pummeling waves of blistering sonic intensity that even manage to build things up faster and faster even once they've seemingly hit the ceiling. Like much of the work on the band's extremely underrated 2018 record Ordinary Corrupt Human Love, the refrains here are almost shockingly catchy given their brutality. I haven't been able to get enough of the song
Coming just before "Magnolia" to kick the record off is "Doberman," which is a staggering start to the album, unpacking a vintage Deafheaven sound that feels more destructive than ever. The blood-curdling vocals shriek out lyrics about being surrounded by a panopticon of your own failures, and the uninterrupted thunderous grinding of the instrumental holds nothing back in matching that tone. All the way on the closing track, "The Marvelous Orange Tree," we have a moment that feels disjointed from the rest of the record thematically. But on the sonic front, it delivers a dense and echo-soaked portrayal of dramatic anguish that makes for an epic final moment on the album, even if the song itself in a vacuum may not stand out as one of the biggest highlights.
I suppose this is an opportunity for me to talk about the few things I don't love on the record. It has a trio of interlude-style songs, each called "Incidental" with a corresponding number. Collectively, they take up about 7 minutes and don't really leave much of an impression behind. Sometimes they're clearly meant to be an exhale of sorts after the album's most dense moments like "Incidental II," but unfortunately, that entry also represents the way they can drag on well past being interesting and serving their function. My least favorite full song on the record by far is "Body Behavior," and it's an issue that largely lies with production. It feels like it thins a lot of things out in a way no other song on the album does, especially the guitars, which all of a sudden feel more like pop punk than black metal. It also affects the vocals, which are made much more front and center with refrains that aren't up to the task.
This review is about to become as long and winding as many of Deafheaven's best tracks, so if you want a summary of the next few paragraphs, here it is. Most of the middle of Lonely People is full of great ideas executed with a combination of intensity, passion, and remarkable levels of technical skill that weave in, out, and around bulky compositions, setting up a nonstop stream of memorable moments. A great place to see this in action is on the second single, "Heathen," which features a hazier shoegaze sound reminiscent of the better parts of the band's last record. Eventually, it erupts into black metal fury with a memorable hook about succumbing to a coma that really fits well within the album thematically and makes for a memorable moment each time it comes around.
"The Garden Route" leads off with a slower buildup that does a great job blending together the shrill vocals with its gentler, almost indie rock-sounding flavors. That makes the eventual eruptions that spring out of the song all the more satisfying, especially across the second half. When the lyrics spiral into running away from your own truths at all costs, it matches the intensely dejected tone of the song. "Amethyst" is the first song on the record to push past 8 minutes, and it's a deeply worthwhile use of that time. It begins with a dreamier instrumental palette that's dialed back even further for a brooding spoken word passage. That eventually gives way to an anxiety-inducing black metal passage with guitars that sound like blaring sirens propelling the song forward dramatically. Lyrically, the song is a harrowing portrayal of love and violence told in retrospect that builds and builds with this shrill metallic whirr. It doesn't shift its composition often, but it makes every single change worthwhile.
For more of a sonic outlier on the record, look no further than "Winona." It's another surprising change of pace with a lengthy instrumental build that combines some of the most precise and frenetic instrumentation on the album with a beautiful backing choir. It weaves between gentle, almost serene interludes and some of the most triumphant cascading metal sequences on the entire album. The execution is flawless from front to back, and the results are magical. The other huge outlier is "Revelator," which feels like an entirely different kind of black metal than the rest of the record. This time it's speedier and more theatrical with lyrics about isolating yourself that eventually turn into something more pummeling and revolutionary. The track deploys a bravado that has NEVER been present in Deafheaven's largely quite dejected discography. While there are admittedly moments where the song feels a bit like arena metal rock star dress up that's out of the band's range, it mostly rocks so hard that I don't even care.
Deafheaven are back, I think that's almost impossible to argue. But limiting it to just that phrase actually does Lonely People With Power a disservice. The band isn't merely returning to a style that used to work for them; they're continuing to push it in new directions and stretch it to new extremes. What results is a record that feels as creatively unburdened as Sunbather but with an extra decade of experience and poise to lean on as they slam through one experiment after another. What results is ferocious and spontaneous on first listen, but hides clever machinations and pinpoint execution underneath that makes it a delight to listen to over and over again, and one of the best metal records I've heard in years. 9/10
