Deafheaven

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, daydreams, 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-baringly 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.

They wrap heavy human emotions in some of the most beautiful, dynamic music you’ll ever hear. As lineups have expanded and contracted, they’ve consistently experimented with and expanded their sound. And while there are certainly signatures to what they do—Clarke’s anguished screams, McCoy’s colorful layers of MBV-meets-Emperor guitar heroics, drummer Daniel Tracy’s blastbeats—it’s the heaviness of the emotion that defines the discography.

Deafheaven’s music feels like a project of accrual—on each album they fill new songs with elements of what they’ve learned in their earlier experiments. You hear echoes of past recordings in the howls of the present: the sun-dappled screamo histrionics of Roads to Judah are more fully realized in Sunbather’s pastel star-scapes; New Bermuda doubles down on the heaviest elements of both of those records; Ordinary Corrupt Human Love threads together elements of the soft and the heavy into an especially epic statement. Infinite Granite, often described simply as Deafheaven’s record with mostly clean vocals, compressed it all into something strikingly solid. That was true, but there was much more to it than that; listening to Lonely People, you can hear its echoes everywhere—and if you listen closely, you can find deeper ways back into it when you listen to it again.

Lonely People With Power is particularly cumulative. “A lot of making this album felt like doubling down on an identity it took a decade to fully understand,” Clarke explains. “Essentially staking claim to an assortment of ideas we’ve thrown together through the years that now feel cohesive. An identity we spent years crafting.”

HARM’S WAY

Harm’s Way’s metallic hardcore has won them fans on four continents; their reputation for delivering blistering sets cannot be overstated, and their timely lyrics about struggle, personal growth and self-awareness leave a lasting impression upon any listener. Having grown with each subsequent release, Posthuman, their fourth full-length—and Metal Blade Records debut—is a devastating addition to their catalog. “We’ve always stayed true to who we are and allowed the songwriting process to take shape organically from record to record, and as the band has progressed, our sound has become more refined with metal and industrial influences,” states drummer Chris Mills, while guitarist Bo Lueders succinctly sums up what people can expect when they first spin the record: “To a Harms Way fan, I would describe Posthuman as a blend of Isolation (2011) and Rust (2015), but it’s sonically way more insane. To anyone else, I would simply say it’s full-on heavy and full-on aggression.”

It is perhaps surprising, given their vitality, that Harm’s Way was initially a side project for members of Chicago hardcore crew Few And The Proud. In 2007, a year after the unit’s inception, they dropped their first 7,” Imprisoned, and in 2008 they unleashed their self-titled 7″—at that stage already showing dramatic signs of growth beyond the power violence sound characterizing their earliest material. It was at this juncture the members realized that they had something that had deeper potential—and meaning—than whatever they first envisaged, and as they began to draw in fans, everyone started to take things far more seriously. Having endured some substantial lineup changes over the years, Mills, Lueders, and vocalist James Pligge have remained the beating heart and driving force in the band, and, while their following has grown with every release, Rust was a true turning point. “Rust is still a record that we are incredibly proud of, and in many ways it helped us to get to where we are today, since the response to that record was essentially what made us decide to make a full-time commitment to this band,” explains Mills. “It opened up many doors for us and allowed us to connect with people in ways we weren’t really expecting, and we toured that record relentlessly.” With bassist Casey Soyk and second guitarist Nick Gauthier coming into the band’s ranks prior to work commencing on Posthuman, the quintet were never going to merely recycle the record that had won the hearts of so many people, determined to keep pushing forward and only making the music they want to. That they realized their goal of crafting something even heavier and more aggressive is evident from the get go: opener “Human Carrying Capacity” a titanic force in its own right, thunderous anti-anthems “Sink,” “Become A Machine” and “Unreality” every bit as powerful. However, the band don’t rely on sheer, unwavering, brute force; industrial elements frequently imbuing the songs with haunting atmospheres, and contributions from their newest members bestowing “Temptation” and “The Gift” with a pronounced and affecting eeriness. “‘Temptation’ was a brainchild of Chris and Nick that really came together in the studio,” Lueders says. “While ‘The Gift’ was the work of Casey in collaboration with our producer Will Putney (The Acacia Strain/The Amity Affliction). We flew him out to the studio for a couple of days and they produced one of my favorite songs on the record. Both that song and ‘Temptation’ are just following the mantra of doing exactly whatever we want with our project.”