Deafheaven - Lonely People With Power

Few bands understand and embrace texture like Deafheaven. On this sixth full-length, the San Franciscan iconoclasts compress layers of loudness into tracks that glimmer like precious, sharp-edged gems. Gorgeous stretches like the midpoint grooves of ‘Body Behavior’ and the clean vocals which introduce ‘Heathen’ offer balance against the outfit’s trademark exhilarating heaviness, such as on the relentless ‘Magnolia’. Elsewhere, Amethyst’ is a gradually–developing piece of structural metallic genius, closer ‘The Marvelous Orange Tree’ walks the line perfectly between extreme and shoegaze, and ‘The Garden Route’ proves itself the strongest track, its intense emotional state providing devastating catharsis. As singular and engrossing as heavy albums get, its heavenly heights may well induce levitation.