Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Deafheaven play a form of music dubbed “blackgaze” due to its mix of black metal and shoegaze (“shoe metal” evidently didn’t have quite the right ring to it). The San Francisco band have acquired a cult following since forming in 2010, although they ruffled feathers with their last album, 2021’s Infinite Granite.It removed the black metal elements from their sound and dialled up the shoegaze. Blast beats — the rapid-fire drumming that courses through extreme metal music with exacting precision and unhinged aggression — were replaced by straightforward rock rhythms. Frontman George Clarke swapped demonic shrieks for hazy indie singing. Guitars jangled rather than roared. The production was brighter and cleaner than previously. Although it shares the same producer, Justin Meldal-Johnsen, Lonely People with Power brings back the heaviness. The album’s title refers to powerful individuals who make it to the top by shedding feelings of identification with the rest of humanity. It also evokes Clarke’s hermetic performance at the microphone, unleashing guttural shrieks and screams in a way that is both impressive and incomprehensible. His voice is mixed into the sonic maelstrom so as to be at one with it.The results make better sense if we treat Deafheaven as an instrumental band for whom vocals are the same as guitar and drums. Indeed, when Clarke does a spot of actual singing on “Heathen” amid a glance back at the alt-rock of Infinite Granite, he sounds intelligible but insipid. The song picks up when he reverts to his screamed mode, flaying words until they are stripped of coherence.Other vocalists guest on three interlude tracks, the best being “Incidental II” with Jae Matthews, a gothic exercise in dread. Amid Daniel Tracy’s high-speed drumming and blistering riffs from guitarists Kerry McCoy and Shiv Mehra, small details stand out. “Magnolia” has heads-down black metal riffage, but also a passage of chiming guitars that would not be out of place in a Siouxsie and the Banshees song. “Revelator” uses deftly worked switches in pace like punctuation points in a forbidding message conveyed at maximum volume.★★★★☆‘Lonely People with Power’ is released by Roadrunner Records
