Photo by Liam Stewart

Maybe not so much a return to form, but Deafheaven got the best of their heaviness back in order last year when they released their sixth studio album and one of 2025’s best in Lonely People With Power. It turns out that wasn’t even the half of the weight that was about to levied our way by the San Francisco experimental black metalists, as they’ve decimated the landscape once again with the surprise release of a new EP entitled At Work In The Fields Of The Bomb.

Epic scales don’t elude the quintet, though in this case, it’s the over-arching concept that blows up the scale of their impact in a three-part narrative centered around Del Tredici’s photo book documenting the places and people involved in the creation of nuclear arms. Leaning loftily into the scorched outer limits of their sound, opener “Hunter” is as cinematic as its accompanying short film visuals directed by Nico Poalillo, Academy Award-winning cinematographer Janusz Kaminsky, and the band’s very own George Clarke. Centering humanity at the peril of those in faceless cowards in power of its imminent extinction, a blood red sky and whirlwind of falling ash spins around it just as the colossal leveling by Deafheaven’s carnage hits. The impact is harrowing.

Directed by: Nico Poalillo

Deafheaven’s At Work In The Fields Of The Bomb is available now on Roadrunner Records.