I wouldn’t be writing about music (or at least ostensibly about music) if it wasn’t for Deafheaven. They are my favorite band without question, and yes, I realize it’s weird to say you have a favorite band when you’re almost 40 years old. But it’s true, and here’s why: they help me feel alive and connected with my emotions in a way that very few artists can.
Their latest album, Lonely People with Power, represents Deafheaven at the absolute peak of their powers (editor’s note: I reserve the right to change my mind when their next album comes out). It’s beautiful and abrasive. Heavy and light. Fast and slow.
Above all else, it’s authentic and real and cathartic in a way that very few things are in 2026. In this attention economy hellscape, Deafheaven is the type of artist that rewards patience, depth, and repeated listenings. I didn’t — or couldn’t — understand this until 2020.
I tried to get into metal or years, but I bounced off time and time again. I got close in 2014 when I went to Sasquatch Festival (RIP) and saw Deafheaven for the first time. They had just released “Sunbather,” a black metal album with a pink cover, and they were making the indie music festival circuit.
It was beautiful music — except for the screaming. Something about it felt too primal and I couldn’t connect with the vocals. I walked away mid set and went to check out some forgettable indie band that probably had an ironic name, an acoustic guitar, and shitty bowler hats.
And then a global pandemic happened. It was bad for all the obvious reasons, but it also gave me a gift: time to reflect. I spent my late teens and twenties in the usual rat race. For me and my fellow high-achiever Millennial brethren, we treated this stage of life like a video game. Bust your ass, level up, do the right things, check all the boxes, do a side quest or two, beat the final boss, and onto the next. High school, college, job, promotion, marriage, house, and so on.
(Side note: there’s a wonderful tweet that I cannot find that essentially described the Millennial experience as a video game in which every boss / shitty thing about modern life is just Ronald Reagan wearing a different hat, and I have never felt more seen.)
Like many of my peers, I rarely had time during this period of life to stop and ask some pretty fucking important questions. Am I doing this because I want to? Or am I doing this because I was told this is what I need to do in order to be happy and successful? Am I the person I want to be? Or am I the person I’m expected to be?
This is by no means a unique experience, but I spent most of those years more concerned about doing things that boosted people’s perception of me than doing the things that actually made me happy. That all changed about the time I turned 30 (self-actualization at 30 is also by no means a unique experience), which just happened to coincide with a once-in-a-century plague.
For better or worse, life slowed down during the pandemic. I had time to explore my interests in ways that I simply hadn’t before. And I started listening to progressively heavier music.
In some ways, it was a return to my origins. When I was 12, you couldn’t convince me that Linkin Park wasn’t the greatest band in the world. At some point, that passion became “cringe” and I left behind the weighty, screamy music that I loved because it wasn’t cool. Heavy music has always helped me unlock feelings and emotions that aren’t always easy to access. As a 30-year-old no longer concerned about being cool, I went back to what I loved.
In 2021, Deafheaven released Infinite Granite, a (mostly) shoegaze album which remains the most divisive in their catalog. Still in the throes of the pandemic, I decided to check it out. I loved the early singles, which featured shimmering guitars, a shitload of reverb, and gentle melodies from lead singer George Clarke.
When the album came out, I threw it on in my Subaru and drove to Mount Rainier on a grey, cloudy day (in today’s parlance, shoegaze-maxxing). It was 8.5 tracks of beautiful, melodic shoegaze. The album’s final track, “Mombasa,” is what changed things for me.
After a slow build with soft, gently swelling music for five and a half minutes, “Mombasa” goes absolutely scorched earth at 5’24” when Clarke unleashes the signature screams that Deafheaven is known for. And as my 144-horsepower Crosstrek struggled up the side of a 14,000-foot active volcano, I thought to myself, in the calmest way possible, “WHAT IN THE GODDAMNED FUCK JUST HAPPENED.”
I understood it all. The screaming, the rage, the anxiety, the fear, the love, the sadness — all of it. It was incredibly cathartic, and it unlocked an entire genre of music that I had never enjoyed previously.
That brings us to 2025, when Lonely People with Power came out. Deafheaven is my favorite band and this is my favorite album. The title itself could not be more apt for the moment as we watch fascists screaming about immigrants and trans people to tiny crowds of wannabe fascists. Every track fits together perfectly, and even after listening to it more than 100 times front to back, I find something new every time.
If you know where to look, Deafheaven’s lyrics can be unbelievably relatable. “Mombasa,” after all, is a song about the passing of a grandparent and holding their hand in the hospital as they pass from our world to whatever lies beyond. On this album, “Doberman” (shoutout to the G.O.A.T radio station KEXP) delivers the haymaker lyric:
All hail now the panopticon / See all around me / All of my failure / Trapped under this dominion
Today feels an awful lot like living in the panopticon. Every keystroke on your phone is tracked and sold to the highest bidder. AI-assisted Flock cameras track your movements. Your social media algorithm leads you into rabbit holes to sell ads. It feels like we’re being watched at all times, and all we’re presented when we look online are people that seem wealthier, happier, fitter, and cooler than we are, even if their reality is often not so different from our own. It turns out that we’re all just making it up as we go. Like I said, relatable lyrics!
A few songs later, “Amethyst” toggles between slow spoken word passages and ferocious screaming, including the line “majesty and misanthropy,” which is just perfect. “Incidental II” begins as a spooky interlude before transforming into a full-on fucking horror movie. “Body Behavior” is a mix of the Beach Boys, blast beats, and reckoning with toxic masculinity. Yes, really.
I’ll close out this already-too-long post by talking about Deafheaven’s closers. Better than any band I can recall, they know how to end an album.
- The aforementioned “Mombasa” is the final track on Infinite Granite.
- The previous album, Ordinary Corrupt Human Love (what a fantastic fucking name), ends with “Worthless Animal,” which features some of the most astounding guitar work you will ever hear.
- Their breakout album Sunbather comes to a close with “The Pecan Tree,” an 11-minute behemoth. It starts off fast and furious, but it reaches new heights when it slows after the first few minutes and lowers listeners into a trance state with pianos, heavily distorted vocal samples, and echoing guitars.
Lonely People with Power ends with “The Marvelous Orange Tree.” It’s a mirror of “Mombasa” in some ways, as it begins with the sound of water (Mombasa begins with a crackling fire), and ends with a gentle glide (Mombasa closes with something like a nuclear explosion of guitar, drums, and screaming). It’s a beautiful song, and if I’m being honest, it almost always makes me cry for reasons I don’t fully understand.
The feeling I’m left with is one of reflection, wherein I consider each step of the path that led to this moment. In the context of the album, it’s the flow of one song to the next, each telling an important part of the story. By its end, I feel like a weight has been lifted from my shoulders, and that the fear and doubt and anxiety that I carried with me has been shed.
It’s an incredible feeling, and few artists can take me there like Deafheaven.
Authentic. Masterful. Cathartic.
Follow the Good Tunes for Dark Times Instagram or check out the playlist on Apple Music or Spotify, which is updated regularly (or whenever I get to it, cut me some slack, sheesh).
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