The big rock album is back, and it doesn’t look or sound a thing like it did the last time an album of its nature could make a dent of relevance out there sometime in late Aughts. In fact, relevance may not even be the point of it anymore. That’s fine. It’s nice to acknowledge something bigger is happening in a less noisier way without there needing to be fever pitch in the press and your timeline about it. You can’t really expect much excitement coming out of rock music nowadays anyway when big streaming has gutted it so that it can pump it full of the week’s disposable pop, crap rap, and bro country du jour (okay, maybe that’s not being fair — they’ll add your favorite indie band who hired the right publicist to some niche made-up genre playlist called “The Week In Goonercore” or something on Friday afternoon before the world forgets it happened by the time Monday resets the content clock.)

It’s been a poetic build back to big rock’s revival, however, because of how full circle it’s come. In a strikingly similar fashion as all of the bands from the punk, hardcore and metal scenes who became golden gooses courted by major labels and would go on to produce dramatically immaculate-sounding albums that either smashed the charts or flopped into cult status, those are the very same scenes who are thriving this latest wave. Deservingly so, it’s also the artists who now are in their veteran eras ascending to the mount. That journey has been long and winding for Deafheaven, navigating a landmine of critical peaks, polarizing receptions from the metal community, sonic evolutions that divided all communities, jumping from Deathwish Inc. to ANTI- Records to Sargeant House, and ultimately, fully realizing their vision of brooding rock grandeur with their sixth studio album and major label debut, Lonely People with Power, on Roadrunner Records.

Clocking in at 62 minutes and 8 seconds in length, the latest from the Bay Area experimental black metal band can be regarded in today’s feeble-minded attention-deficit listening culture as a “demanding” listen, yet it’s most striking that it’s one of the most cohesively-designed productions in the rock spectrum that melds the band’s towering post-metal juiced to the max (“Magnolia”, “Revelator”) with gauzier reprieves experimented with on 2021’s Infinite Granite (“The Garden Route”, “Heathen”) and even new moves in their form of heavy that tempt more mainstream appeal (“Body Behavior”.) Complete with intro, intermission, and closing chapters featuring Jae Matthews from Boy Harsher and Paul Banks of Interpol in spoken word and shimmering production from Justin Meldal-Johnsen (Paramore, Jimmy Eat World,) Lonely People with Power is Deafheaven’s black metal magnum opus.

Highlights: “Magnolia”, “The Garden Route”, “Body Behavior”

Deafheaven’s Lonely People with Power is available now on Roadrunner Records.