Lonely People With Power

You get certain artists who are defined by a particular release; universally agreed to be better than their earlier, immature work, yet setting a high bar that they never quite manage to reach again. Fear Factory did it with Demanufacture, which is still aped to this day; Judas Priest spent the best part of half a century trying to outdo Stained Class; Miles Davies did Kind of Blue. Even Taylor Swift peaked sone time ago. 

Shoegaze crossed with black metal band Deafheaven, too, appeared to succumb to this trap with Sunbather. Out of nowhere some hipsters put out an atmospheric, moody, brilliant album with a pink cover and it became an albatross. True black metallers, of course, denounced it because some normal people liked it, and they retreated into the frostbitten wastes with Abbath's solo work. But even they would acknowledge through gritted teeth that Deafheaven proved you could do black metal sans corpse paint and Satan. It garnered a lot of praise and, I hope, sales. 

But the problem with excellence is maintaining it and, frankly, they didn't. New Bermuda was serviceable and just fine, while Ordinary Corrupt Human Love had moments of brilliance lost amongst too much guitar noodling. And then they tried to be just a pure Shoegaze band on Infinite Granite, and it's all very pretty and nice, but I'd rather listen to Seefeel for that sort of thing. 

So it was with a little trepidation I greeted the news that they had a new album coming out. Would they top Sunbather? Would it be more synth washes? 

I needn't have worried. The first single Magnolia came out and it ripped! Harsh vocals and high energy and great. Ordered the album and waited.

Reader, this is the album you wanted them to make. They stopped trying to dial up the Shoegaze or metal and just recorded some tunes. It is sunbather but mature, focussed, brilliant. Their best. Effortless swagger. I really hope they get properly huge.