Deafheaven with Harm's Way, I Promised The World

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The desire for escape is central to Deafheaven. It’s often about attempting to escape cycles: the repetition of the everyday, things you’ve inherited, situations you don’t want to face, your very DNA. Maybe you can find temporary release through self-medication, day dreams, delusion, and maybe even art. Up to this point, though, something also seemingly central to Deafheaven’s music: the fact that no matter the approach you take, you can’t run away from yourself.

Deafheaven formed in the Bay Area in 2010 as the duo of childhood friends vocalist George Clarke and guitarist Kerry McCoy. Drummer Daniel Tracy joined in 2012, guitarist and keyboardist Shiv Mehra came on board in 2013, with bassist Chris Johnson joining in 2017. Together they’ve continually pushed what it means to make metal, they’ve also continued to feel just as open, honest, and soul-bearingly human as they did back in 2010.

The emotions that boil up in their songs are not vague or over-generalized: You see them as people, ones who are often struggling or failing, but people who are getting back up and wanting to keep going. This is especially true of the band’s sixth album, Lonely People With Power, Deafheaven’s first record in four years and their first for a new label. From Roads to Judah to their 2013 breakthrough Sunbather, a defining album for the heavy metal genre, through to 2015’s New Bermuda, 2018’s Ordinary Corrupt Human Love, and 2021’s Infinite Granite, Deafheaven has never shied away from telling you exactly who they are: their humble beginnings, their battles with addiction, alienation, burnout, and depression. Autobiographical details surface and resurface throughout the songs like a breadcrumb trail: Sunbather was, in part, inspired by Clarke growing up in an apartment with his mother and brother without any money and wondering what it’d be like to have it. There’s also his realization that, like some of his family, he’s able to be emotionally cold, and not necessarily able to love. This returns, in full on, Lonely People With Power.