San Francisco-based American black metallers Deafheaven just dropped their 6th studio album, “Lonely People With Power”. Fans as well as critics are claiming this as their best work yet. The name here itself drops a hint on what the album can be about. Powerful people are always lonely; as George Clarke puts it, the album treats loneliness “as a spiritual vacancy”. The album travels to the depths of loneliness in the face of connections: Denial, Loneliness, Power and the complexities of intimate human relationships.
“Lonely People With Power”: The Tracks Are More than Just the Energy, With Emotional Depth, Sonic Fluctuations and Deeply Personal Lyrics
The album kicks in with an instrumental one minute track called “Incidental I”, an eerie instrumental: hint enough at what you are going to experience. The intense raw aggressive energy suddenly kicks in with “Doberman”, talking about the humans find themselves trapped in panopticons, in their search for “success”. The panopticons are visible to anyone but them. “Magnolia” rages across complex relationships like fatherhood with funeral scenes, exploring power dynamics and forgiveness (touching on Clarke’s personal loss of his uncle). Reflecting more on isolation, “The Garden Route” is a about a man who wants to run away “from the truth”, apparently with his lover. “Heathen” feels like an ode to the transition between doubts and complete numbness. “I wonder what is numbness/And what’s a coma?”, Clarke’s sudden transition into fierce growly vocals from a relatively cleaner distant sound which feels like spiraling without a direction.
Deafheaven’s “Lonely People With Power”: Rage Keeps Coming Back Amidst the Eeriness. The Contrasts Make the Listening Experience Hauntingly Beautiful
“Amethyst” takes a similar take like “Heathen”, starting with relatively clean eerie vocals until Clarke screams out. The contrasting sounds represent the conflicts and keep it interesting. Seemingly seeking to know life, the narrator says, “What is life? I don’t know/ All I know is its price,” before claiming his peace comes in his aloneness but then asking for guidance anyway. “Incidental II” is another delusional song which breaks out into a fierce cry for help. Noisy, eerie and desperate.
“Revelator” sees the rage coming back: Isolation, self-loathing and crumbling destiny, but this is only the beginning; the song gets only fiercer, only to crumble. To crumble to pieces of string sounds building up and hitting suddenly again. This constant letting go and coming back, with heartfelt lyrics and equally enticing melodies, is sure to keep metal lovers hooked. Then comes “Body Behavior”, with more spaces in between, although the subject matter keeps building up the tension. Here we see a father showing porn to his child to “know his type”. Some utter disgust with hints on our collective failure as a society?
“Lonely People With Power”: Incidental I, II, III – Tracks That Take a Pause from the Roaring Apocalypse and Focus on the Eerie Gloomy Spiraling Backdrop with Disturbing Droning Wisps
Incidental III takes us to an eerie, gloomy, quiet world. It’s as if all the 3 Incidentals – I, II and III bind the album together in a sonic backdrop. “Winona” and “The Marvelous Orange Tree” are the two most haunting tracks in the album. To accompany the album, Deafheaven have released a cinematic short film with visual themes of isolation and emotional detachment. The name “The Marvellous Orange Tree” can be traced back to 1880s when magician Jean Eugène Robert-Houdin used to stun his audiences with a magic called by the same name. “With my endless illness/ Walking into blackness” – this is how the last song on the album ends. Just like the trick which resulted in a lady’s handkerchief bursting out of the plant, held together by butterflies, this masterpiece album is bound to make an impact on the listeners.
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Deafheaven: Evolving through the years
Deafheaven have worked on sounds which are quite distinguishable from one another over all the years. Take their second studio album “Sunbather”(2013), the heavy sound contrary to the relatively clean vocals on “Infinite Granite”, the 2021 release. Never settling on a particular soundscape, the band has always managed to stir things up. “Lonely People With Power” is significantly different from their previous works which is earth-shattering heavy but still melodic. The poetry does not get lost amidst the masculine rage.
As front man George Clarke had pointed out, “In the last decade, we made Sunbather and then it was like, ‘We’re not just this, we’re this.’ And we made New Bermuda. And it’s like, ‘We’re not just this, we’re this,’ and so on. There was always an effort to challenge ourselves, whereas with this one, there was actually a real comfort in looking back and feeling established in our own sound.”
