Deafheaven - Lonely People With Power (2025)^{Release ID: 58638}

Well I got this one wrong didn't I?

Returning to their atmospheric black metal form on records like Sunbather and Ordinary Corrupt Human Love, Deafheaven make their harrowing return in 2025. I heavily criticized the bands previous album, Infinite Granite, for axing its heavier sounds for its more post-rock style. Not because they were bad, instead because Deafheaven's principal feature was the uplifting nature of their black metal; a genre that is well known for being the antithesis of uplifting. I also said that I figured that this would be the direction that Deafheaven would continue down the foreseeable future. 

Well that didn't happen. Lonely People With Power is a monstrous album in both its length as well as intensity. Like previous albums, Deafheaven are not going to overwhelm the listener with a typical black metal display of relentless tremolo picking, blast beats, and vocal screeching for just over an hour. The album is filled with atmospheric breaks and interludes, the metal portions are diversified with half-time style changes and more melodic guitar leads, as well as clean vocals. And as someone who cares very much about padding on an album, this record does not falter. There may be sections that could have been trimmed down (such as the intro on "Winona"), but overall, Lonely People With Power has enough diversity to keep it interesting, but without a lot of the self indulgence that plagues modern progressive metal. 

The sound of this record is well done also. This is the first Deafheaven album published through Roadrunner Records. Now I've always viewed this record label as the "Gentlemen's Club" of metal record labels given their reputation. And even though Roadrunner is not particularly well known for its publication of black metal albums, Deafheaven fit right in. The albums have always sounded more mature and it continues here with the mixing. George Clarke's shrieking is still heavily condensed behind a wall-of-sound and acts more as a secondary instrument on songs like "Heathen" and it does work a little better than expected. Some albums like this put heavy emphasis on their vocals to make a statement, but here the vocals are more metaphoric in presentation and you don't really need them to get the full experience of this record.

All of that being said however, it's hard for me to enjoy Lonely People With Power more because it feels like Deafheaven are sinking into the status quo of modern atmospheric black metal. As I mentioned off the top of this review, Deafheaven are known for their uplifting textures and sharper tone quality. What I noticed here is that the tone quality has been quietly flattened; way more minor key signatures and chordal progressions, and more walloping foundational grooves. And even though the songwriting on this album is very good, it doesn't take long to realize that Deafheaven are seceding themselves to Alcest in that regard, when it was only a few short years ago their positions were reversed.

This is probably a nitpicky criticism of Lonely People With Power from me, but I think it is very important. The reason I constantly return to tracks like "Dream House" and "Canary Yellow" all of these years later is because of how unique they are within the black metal framework, and Deafheaven did this without incorporating a folk gimmick like Panopticon or Saor. Now, without that bottom line of "this is Deafheaven" for most of this album (only really saved by the final two tracks), it becomes harder to find songs here that are truly timeless. We shall see what the future brings but for now, Lonely People With Power  is a good record and deserving of its early praise, but it should be a lot better.

Best Songs: Magnolia, The Garden Route, Body Behavior, Winona