“Deafheaven aren't real black metal.” It’s a sentence purists have bandied about ever since the San Franciscans started tempering extreme music’s savagery with blankets of shoegaze. Pearls only got clutched tighter as 2013’s Sunbather won the acclaim of indie magazines, then again when Infinite Granite eschewed screeching and blastbeats almost entirely.
Now, Lonely People With Power seems tailor-made to shut whinging mouths. The proverbial yang to Infinite Granite’s yin, it bombards with torrents of volume and grants only fleeting glimpses of the band’s tender heart.
Lead single Magnolia epitomises Deafheaven’s rejuvenated might. With no atmospheric fannying about, it breaks straight into a sprint of bullheaded metal and progressive rhythms. George Clarke has rediscovered his scream to ear-splitting effect. It’s a display of brutality matched by Revelator, with its storm of death metal riffing followed by stampeding chords and drums, and opener proper Doberman with its neck-wrecking groove.
Moments of sensitivity sneak through during Heathen, where George croons the opening verse, plus the slow-burning centrepiece Amethyst. However, these ambient detours only strengthen the inevitable walls of metal to come.
The band’s shoegaze proclivities also occasionally show at the same time as their seething heaviness. It’s most notable during Body Behavior, where sticksman Daniel Tracy slows to a bounce sure to get crowds leaping as the vocals and guitars remain at full pelt.
Deafheaven were clearly hungry for metal after Infinite Granite’s all-atmospheric adventuring, and they could have made a second Sunbather to achieve that end while keeping the indie hipsters onside. That they decided to satiate themselves and make an even angrier statement instead says everything about their lack of fuck-giving. “Not real black metal”? Call the jury back in!
Lonely People With Power is out now via Roadrunner. Deafheaven play Outbreak in June and Damnation Festival in November.
