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.
If Alcest had hung it up after 
“Ecstatic black metal” seems a bit like an oxymoron. If you were to ask someone to describe black metal in one word, “ecstatic” might not come up very often. In fact, if you were to create a relevant Family Feud category, guessing it would land you a big fat X and a Steve Harvey overreaction.
If there’s one thing the metal community loves, it’s hyperbole. There are thousands of metal records that come out a year, and they are all described with superlatives.
I’m not sure exactly who it was that drew such rigid lines around metal. While pioneers like Sabbath and Maiden were wide open to other influences, somewhere along the lines, metal shored itself up and went to war with other music. It’s not just softer styles either—metal fans and hardcore fans often come to blows with one another. Even subgenres within metal itself have split into warring factions.
Mount Eerie is one of those bands that I’ve mostly known just by reputation. For years, I’ve heard the name of Phil Elverum’s project thrown around alongside acts like Bon Iver, The Antlers, Sun Kil Moon, and other songwriters offering emotional devastation to hushed instrumentation.
