This story originally appears in Revolver’s Spring 2025 Issue, which is available now at Revolver’s shop.
“On all of our records, we just followed our nose,” says Deafheaven vocalist George Clarke.
And over these past 15 years, that scent has taken many shapes: the atmospheric black metal of their 2011 debut, Roads to Judah, the cinematic blackgaze of their breakout period — including 2013’s Sunbather, 2015’s New Bermuda and 2018’s Ordinary Corrupt Human Love (featuring the Grammy-nominated “Honeycomb”) — and the clean-voiced post-rock of 2021’s Infinite Granite. Now, with the shredded-throat, gritted-teeth catharsis of Lonely People With Power, Deafheaven have created their most aggressive and poetic music to date.
The album marks their second straight collaboration with Justin Meldal-Johnsen, a big-deal producer better known for his work in synth-pop (M83) and indie rock (Metric) than anything in the heavy realm. And Clarke says Lonely People With Power feels like the result of “unfinished business” — after having broken the ice with the dreamier and more melodic Infinite Granite, it felt natural to ramp up the ferocity. Again, it all goes back to their collective nose.
“At the end of the cycle for Ordinary Corrupt Human Love, there was a real restlessness in the band,” the frontman says. “There was a real want to do something different, to expand and fine-tune our songwriting. In a lot of respects, I think [Lonely People With Power] wouldn’t have come out the way it did had we not spent those couple years really pulling things apart and reexamining them. When we were first meeting Justin, we set up a lunch to just feel each other out. We were going to formally ask if he’d be interested in working with the band, and his assumption was that we would be making a record like Lonely. So when we came to him with Infinite Granite songs, he was like, ‘OK, not what I expected, but I see what you want, and I can help you do that.’”
“It was the first time I remember feeling like I’d been produced,” adds guitarist Kerry McCoy, who co-founded Deafheaven with Clarke in 2010, when they shared an apartment in San Francisco’s Upper Haight neighborhood. Before Infinite Granite, the duo had worked for nearly a decade with producer Jack Shirley, whose “hands-off” approach gave their records a distinctive, raw energy. (Shirley stuck around to help engineer Infinite Granite.)
“What I love about Jack is that you sound like what you sound like,” McCoy continues. “You plug in, get the levels, press record. That’s it. That’s how you sound. It’s very punk of him, and that’s what we wanted for those records.” That kind of self-sufficient, DIY spirit was appealing — Deafheaven wrote their early songs on acoustic guitar because, according to Clarke, they “couldn’t afford amps.”
Meldal-Johnsen helped them evolve, but Deafheaven have a hard time sitting still. They felt a creative itch during the Infinite Granite tour — playing lots of heavy stuff during soundchecks, cementing the direction they’d take on their sixth LP.
“We were in the beginnings of writing this record and remembering how much fun it is to play a set that’s dominated with this kind of music,” Clarke continues. “That furthered when we did the Sunbather anniversary shows [in 2023], and furthered still when we did the Knocked Loose tour. Firmly, though, we’d already had this in our head: This is a blast. This is what we want to do. When we spoke to Justin, we were like, ‘I think now is the time — with the level of comfort we have with each other and how much we know each other — to embark on this big, more classic-sounding Deafheaven album that you had anticipated the first time.”
“I personally love the last album,” adds McCoy. “I know it’s kinda divisive among our fanbase … but it was a great experience. With this one, we were like, ‘Yeah, what if we have [Meldal-Johnsen] stretch his Carcass muscles a little bit? Maybe he doesn’t know the depths of black metal, but George made the point: ‘He does know interesting.’ When something is good, he can observe it. We were showing him obscure YouTube videos — ‘You ever heard this band?’ [And] he was showing us the ins and outs of Coil and Throbbing Gristle deep cuts that we hadn’t heard.”
Intensity and drama define Lonely People With Power — like on the unrelenting “Doberman,” which features the distorted attack of McCoy and guitarist Shiv Mehra, Clarke’s majestic shriek, the low-end thunder of bassist Chris Johnson and the head-spinning blast beats of drummer Daniel Tracy. But as you might imagine, they aren’t always pulling from obvious influences to make their heaviest songs.
“I was listening a lot to the composer Jóhann Jóhannsson, who did the Sicario soundtrack. He was kind of a Berlin ambient techno guy, too,” says McCoy. “I would go on these runs at the Hollywood Reservoir around the end of 2023, early 2024, and listen to these soundtracks of his. I was also rediscovering my love for Converge, especially the You Fail Me era. The story of this band is that what the five of us love to do is combine, spiritually, these two moods and see sonically how you put them together. There are a lot of sparse, reverb-driven, bare and emotional guitar lines that Kurt [Ballou] does in that era of Converge, and he’s obviously the GOAT. I was wondering, What if there was a way to combine that with the mood of this chord progression and throw some [Thee] Silver Mt. Zion [Memorial Orchestra] in there? That’s where that original lead guitar line [in “Doberman”] came from.
“We were also rediscovering our love of classic black metal at the time,” he continues. “These classical, baroque-style chords put through blast beats… It’s very raw and melodic. It will break your heart, but it’s very pissed-off sounding and will kick your ass. Now when I hear it, it just sounds like Deafheaven.” He laughs.
The rest of “Doberman,” McCoy adds, “is just our classic influences, all the staples of atmospheric black metal. Then you have the black-metal break-down section at the end. We were like, ‘What if this broke down into a Russian Circles-meets-post-hard-core-chords thing, and Dan ramped it up into what’s like a very early Killswitch Engage double-kick pattern?’ When we were in the studio and heard it, we were like, ‘Man, this really scratches a particular itch for us.’ The clean part is very Aphex Twin, and the end is very — with respect and love — very classic us. I don’t know another band that does the end of those songs like we do.”
Deafheaven are also one of heavy music’s most inquisitive and philosophical bands — a quality reflected in Clarke’s lyrics for Lonely People With Power, which began with the title and bloomed outward. “In a broad sense, it was initially intended to consider people of influence who lack intimate relationships and intimate connections — and how that way of being can occasionally influence one to obtain power or to seek influence,” he says.
“[It’s] what I keep describing as a ‘spiritual vacancy.’ But because Deafheaven has always been a vehicle for the personal — and a lot of this record, for me, was to double-down on the idea of what I thought Deafheaven was — things naturally went toward the personal, instead of this broader, quasi-political idea.”
A perfect illustration of this is the pummeling “Magnolia,” which arrives as a barrage of blast beats and wall-of-sound distortion. It opens with the narrator reflecting on “The only photo at your funeral/On the easel/In the shadow of the willowed Sacred Heart” and, on the chorus, proclaiming, “I owned everything thought to be suicidal mania/I was everything taught to me/Drinking deeply/The truth of my grief.”
“I started talking about people who’ve had an influence on our lives and what we’ve learned from them — how family influences your way of thought and way of being, and how sometimes when you deal with the same things that your family has dealt with, when you’ve learned these things from your family, it can feel like a fixed narrative,” says Clarke.
“It can feel like a destiny. It can feel like you have no mobility, that this thing has been chosen for you. I thought about people in my family who have struggled with depression or alcoholism or a slow suicide and how, when I’ve recognized at times those same things in myself, I have spent a lot of my life gravitating toward it — and assuming that this too will be my outcome. So ‘Magnolia’ kind of begins to reconcile with that idea.”
He points to specific lyrics to illustrate that concept, including the haunting couplet “I owned everything thought to be/I was everything taught to me.”
“Throughout the record there are these moments of clarity when assessing this idea,” he continues. “It happens in ‘Doberman’ too, with the last line: ‘Suddenly present now.’ I’m becoming more aware of who I am as a person, and I’m not beholden to this thought of outcomes and destiny — I’m moving away from that. Sometimes those lyrics are more abstracted, which is just how I tend to write, and sometimes they include very concrete details. Sacred Heart is a Catholic church in Winona, Mississippi — ‘Winona’ is also a title of a song on the record. I am conscious that it’s important for a listener to fill in their own blanks, and my hope is that the stories being told present these broader ideas, rather than being so strictly autobiographical.”
Deafheaven’s George Clarke
The album’s emotional centerpiece is the first song they wrote: “Body Behavior,” a journey of light and shadow that touches on a rarely explored subject.
“What started out as this broader idea moved into the personal,” says Clarke. “I wanted to write about relationships between men and what men are taught and how that transforms itself into your own being. ‘Body Behavior’ is about someone who’s showing you pornography and men who use this as a way to try to teach something to each other, and how there’s a lesson there. It’s not nefarious — in a way, it’s so natural, but it’s ignorant. There’s no real thinking behind it. It’s a surface-level way to connect and teach.
“I’ve had conversations with so many different guy friends of mine who’ve had this same experience. I don’t think it’s talked about, but when it happens at a young-enough age or often enough, it alters your perceptions of relationships and women and how to treat women and how to view yourself within a relationship. Ultimately, I just thought it was kind of interesting — the way that I see it in myself and others how those things tend to play out. I thought it was worth writing about.”
The song’s frantic arrangement seems to encapsulate every sound Deafheaven have ever attempted. According to McCoy, it draws on vintage krautrock (Neu!, CAN), Hail to the Thief-era Radiohead, Portishead, the Strokes and “blackened screamo.” It was an “amalgamation of influences” that wound up feeling like a “puzzle” they had to solve. “People I’ve showed it to are like, ‘This is the weirdest thing I’ve ever heard.’”
One reason McCoy is able to travel so deeply inward and bring these bizarre combinations to life is his sobriety — a shift that has given him creative patience and mental clarity.
“When I first got sober, I was halfway through the writing of Ordinary,” he says. “Once you remove all that gunk and get your feelings and brain back, I felt this youthfulness that I hadn’t really felt since I started doing drugs and drinking at 14 or 16. I felt that come back and I was like, ‘Ah, I remember this guy!’ At this point, seven-plus years sober, I’m used to it. This is just me. I remember what it was like to write [under the influence] — the real bad one was New Bermuda.
Deafheaven’s Kerry McCoy
“At this point, I’m exploring more spiritual aspects of it, so I try to meditate daily. I try and be more present in general and not worry about the future or regret the past as much, and I don’t have too many problems with that these days. It’s that, along with a healthy lifestyle that I try to lead — going for runs or surfing. Not to get too L.A.-guy on you here, but what tends to happen is that if you open yourself up to the universe — or the idea of where you’re at right now — there is an infinite amount of possibilities of what will happen next. If you are in that moment and taking steps to remain present in that moment, I’ve found that ideas will come easier to you that way.”
One example on the album is the eight-minute epic “Amethyst,” which evolved considerably over time — to the point that the album version almost feels like “a different song.”
“[It was originally like], ‘This part is a black-metal part, and this part is not,’” McCoy says. “It just didn’t hit that thing. The reworking of that came from being able to soberly and presently look at a problem and go, ‘I understand that I wish this was not like this. I wish this song gave me the feeling of, This song kicks ass, and it’s done, and I don’t have to do any more work.’ [You have to accept that it’s] not like that and then allow yourself to be like, ‘Let’s do the next thing and work on it and leave yourself open and see what happens.’ I can only judge that in contrast to the times where I’ve not been sober when we’re writing records.
“I don’t want to ruin songs for anybody, so I’m not going to name-drop them, but there are certain parts of New Bermuda where it’s a little sloppy or riff-stack-y. These days I think it’s both easier for it to happen, and we’re gentler with ourselves about the songwriting process. I think it’s also that we’re 36/37 now and it comes easier. But that’s not possible without sobriety. I’m also a stressed-out prick when we’re writing this stuff. When I’m presenting a riff and it has to pass the gauntlet of four other dudes, and they’re like, ‘That sounds like a blah blah part,’ and I’m like, ‘Fuck you.’ I’m not Mother Teresa over here, but it’s definitely a lot better than the five of us doing drugs in a room and being like, ‘Fuck you, this sucks.’” He laughs.
It takes that kind of self-reflection to sustain a band to the 15-year mark — through their modest beginnings to breaking out commercially and helping define an entire movement of modern heavy music. When Clarke looks back at the pivotal moments of the past decade-plus, a few come to mind: “We were in Oslo when ‘Dream House’ premiered, just being so excited. I was in the airport when we got the Grammy nomination, and I think I was on the East coast. So it was 9 a.m. or something, and I was calling everyone — but it was 6 a.m. [out West] and no one was picking up!”
“It was crazy to be acknowledged on that level — something we didn’t expect whatsoever. Meeting Justin — another huge one. Kerry and I started this project when we shared a room in the Upper Haight. There was no bigger world. So when these big-world things happen to you, it’s really monumental.”
For McCoy, Deafheaven’s gradual climb has given him perspective on every accomplishment — helping him realize “there is no ceiling” on this thing.
“The most defining moment of it has been the last year or so,” he says. “Meeting huge bands who are peers of ours now and realizing: All of this is attainable. I had someone I know tell me, ‘Don’t look now, but you’re having a career. While you’re sitting here worrying about the future, the last 15 years of your life have gone by, and you’ve had a music career. This is your career. Don’t miss that.’”