In the years after Deafheaven released their seminal masterpiece Sunbather, the group has been caught in a sort of tug of war between straying too far from what works and sounding too much like themselves. Even their best moments post-Sunbather have felt self-conscious about how well they were riding the line. From the other side of Infinite Granite though, it feels like that sonic departure was the palate cleanser they needed.

Lonely People in Power finds the group as self-assured as ever, offering up a comprehensive blend of their different modes that feels less like an attempt to fix what isn’t broken than an embrace of everything they’ve done.

The darkness of New Bermuda is revisited, but where that record felt like an attempt to prove themselves to their haters, here the kvltier moments offer a foil to the more melodic sensibilities left from Infinite Granite. The three Incidental tracks (two of which feature guests, including one Paul Banks of Interpol) fill a similar role as the Chelsea Wolfe tracks on Ordinary Corrupt Human Love. 

And of course, there are enough big cathartic blackgaze moments to satisfy everyone still finding them through Sunbather. Gauzy walls of noise, cinematic song structures, and steep climbs up and down the dynamic range create a powerful emotional narrative. Where their experiments on previous records felt like departures from this formula, here those same elements feel more like punctuation.

In this regard, they’ve managed to harmonize every version of themselves to create a record that feels the most wholly Deafheaven they’ve ever done—even if it won’t quite topple Sunbather from the top of the pile.