Album Review - Deafheaven’s Lonely People With Power

Members of San Francisco metal outfit Deafheaven

When I sat down to consider my inaugural album review, I knew that I wanted to pick something that checked a few different boxes. It needed to a) be an album I actually listened to all the way through, b) have come out fairly recently, and c) preferably be a metal record, since I see metal and its subgenres getting snubbed more and more, while simultaneously experiencing a kind of renaissance that the community really hasn’t seen in a couple of decades. Enter Deafheaven, a band that I was first introduced to through their magnum opus 2013 album, Sunbather. It was this album which saw the band begin to receive attention outside of the underground, helped the band carve out their own unique, heavy-metal-and-shoegaze-infused sound dubbed “blackgaze”, and which I HATED the first time I heard it.

Album artwork for Sunbather by Deafheaven, 2013

As a Mississippi kid who grew up in the evangelical South, black metal was NOT a metal subgenre that I would allow myself to enjoy in 2013. I had been listening to my favorite bands like Megadeth, Metallica, Iron Maiden, and Dream Theater for a while by then, most of my music taste coming from my dad, but there were still extremes in the metal genre that I was scared of. After watching Anthony Fantano’s video review of Sunbather, its album art caught my eye and I decided to give it a listen. I was very quick at that time to discard it, chalking it up to another godless, screechy, weird black metal act that I was never meant to like or understand. Fast forward a few years to when I started thinking for myself and liking things that were good, and Sunbather is now an album that I would include in my own “Mount Rushmore” of albums that have influenced my overall taste as a music enjoyer.

What makes Sunbather and Deafheaven as a band so interesting to me is their distinct ability within the metal genre to experiment, reinvent, and trailblaze unlike anyone else in the space. It was with this album, and then later on albums like New Bermuda (2015) and Ordinary Corrupt Human Love (2018) that the band would cement themselves as the pioneers of a sound which combined elements of the shoegaze genre (droning, haunting walls of sound) with the core of what sets apart black metal from its fellow subgenres; this new sound is now widely known as “blackgaze.” Deafheaven’s newest full-length album Lonely People with Power (2025) is the bands best work to date, showcasing just how far the evolution of blackgaze has come, and reminding us again why George, Kerry, and the boys are still the most accessible black metal outfit there is.

Album artwork for Lonely People with Power by Deafheaven, 2025

Lonely People’s promo started incredibly strong with a pair of phenomenal lead singles in “Magnolia” and “Heathen” which let us all know that this album would be a return to the band’s black metal roots, and the completed product would certainly prove this.

Immediately, a through-line is established in the album’s first track “Incidental I”, followed by “Incidental II” and “Incidental III” respectively later in the tracklist. These tracks, while not as exciting or layered as the rest of the album, help to set a consistent pace and give the band some cool opportunities to collaborate with other artists, namely vocalist Jae Matthews and Paul Banks of Interpol fame.

The album’s sonic tone is set in the opening measures of “Doberman”, as the stylized production and riffy guitar passages immediately let a seasoned listener know that the band is returning to their roots. “Doberman” is the start of the album’s strongest run of tracks, moving through the behemoth single “Magnolia”, the clean and crisp “The Garden Route”, and the album’s other lead single “Heathen.” It’s with “Heathen” that the band decided to depart from the more shoegaze-heavy sound of their last album and their more traditional metal sensibilities so far on this one, as the track mixes the dark pop overtones of Infinite Granite with George Clarke’s harsh, screamed vocals and Kerry McCoy and Shiv Mehra’s silky guitar passages. These three songs are relentless when listened to back-to-back-to-back, which makes the tonal reprieve which follows in “Amethyst” so sweet.

The album’s second half begins with “Incidental II” before barreling forth into the driving and brutal “Revelator”, which marries traditional guitar riffs of death and thrash metal with biblical imagery to litigate the current political landscape. Bars like “I’m clipping the flowers / Of spiritless leaders / Oh, they tremble in towers / Lonely people with power,” showcase Clarke’s evolution as a lyricist. Thematically, Lonely People with Power is pretty tight, with more overarching themes of fragile masculinity and power pouring through on songs like the harrowing “Body Behavior,” in which Clarke boldly confronts an older father figure taking sexual advantage of a younger subject, lamenting “He sits and shows me naked women / Wants to know my type / Asks if I’ve thought to want them / Laughs when I’m shy.” Here, the album’s title and artwork start to take on a new meaning, as the “lonely people with power” can refer to a normal, everyday person who gets a taste of power over someone else and abuses it. Following “Incidental III,” the album ends with the sweeping and epic “Winona,” which sees the band applying its tried-and-true formula of a crescendoing cacophony building toward a precipice at the end, and into “The Marvelous Orange Tree” which nods to the closing track on Sunbather, and which feature’s some cleanly sung vocals washed over clean guitar passages to conclude the album’s journey.

In many ways, Lonely People with Power is a retreat back for Deafheaven into a lane that had shown them success for nearly a decade, and I would argue that that is a good thing. When a band that is so known for something so specific and groundbreaking tries something new and then decides to return to their roots, but done even better than before, that is a mark of talent and staying power beyond just having folks tune in every few years when you drop a project. Lonely People with Power proves that Deafheaven know exactly what works for them and their listeners, and that they do not plan on stopping doing that any time soon.

Favorite Tracks - “Magnolia”, “Heathen”, “Revelator”, “Winona”

Rating - 4.5/5