Deafheaven Review: Blackgaze's Latest Devastates with Each Twist and Turn

Electric Ballroom, Camden

Set within Camden’s sweat-slicked cauldron, the San Francisco blackgaze group incite an incendiary set enveloping their latest release; intent on pushing their genre's needle further than ever.

There’s a particular kind of electricity which infiltrates the room tonight; an anticipatory hum which formulates equal parts dread and devotion. 'Doberman' tears the house open. No slow build, no ceremony — just instantaneous detonation. Blast beats and bass-pedal frenzy jolt the crowd into collision amidst distorted guitars and roaring basslines. George Clarke wastes no time hurling introspection into the void (“I’ll decline I seeded from my fright…”) as pits form, fold, and then multiply. The song’s latter-half breakdown, ignited into riot by “My iris has only black views”, turns the floor into a single shuddering organism, ending in a chaotic collapse.

'Magnolia' continues the barrage. Another of the band’s recent highlights, it lives or dies on precision, and tonight it lives ferociously. Taut guitar refrains coil around Tracy’s simmering blasts while Clarke’s vocals cut through with serrated clarity (“Secrets we die with…”). The euphoric outro blooms into something widescreen and strangely hopeful, a reminder of how far Lonely People With Power has pushed their songwriting: darker, sharper, and somehow more luminous.

'The Garden Route' shifts the temperature. Brooding atmospherics creep in as bodies sway, then crash, in slower motion. Clarke leans into visibly pained conviction (“Now I run from all my truth…”) while the guitars sketch out new shapes, weaving a more meditative, suffocating pressure. It’s a welcome detour, a reminder that Deafheaven’s power isn’t solely in velocity but in tension; how they stretch it, release it, and let it hang for the adoring mass gathered tonight.

After a bruising 'Body Behaviour', 'Amethyst' offers one of the night’s most striking turns. Clarke’s spoken-word verses land with unnerving intimacy before the track erupts fully in the chorus. Guitar distortion spills into something almost celestial, Tracy’s drumming pounding with ritualistic force. Throughout, Clarke stalks the stage, heaving, gesticulating, sweating; willing the whole room into the song’s emotional architecture.

If 'Incidental II' offers a fleeting moment of reprieve, 'Revelator' picks the room back up by the throat, cursing us into a dissonant yet melodic string of arrangements. As Clarke shouts commands into the maelstrom (“Cut them down, find them… burn it in the fire”), bodies invariably fold into each new wave of noise.

At long last the night's conclusion rears itself: “Dream House” proves euphoric, crushing, transcendently bleak, while 'Winona' feels like an emotional comedown, swerving between annihilation and tenderness. Clarke delivers its closing lines (“You took it all and left me nothing…”); something close to exhaustion, bowing out on a final exhale of distortion.

Deafheaven’s set tonight proves blistering in almost every direction it takes, with a handful of gentler respites that highlight the breadth of their newer material. Older cuts still showcase their raw songwriting brilliance, but their latest release reveals a band now more fluid, cohesive, and varied than ever before. Clarke’s vocals hold impressively well throughout the night, in spite of occasional tonal uniformity, however, Deafheaven remain one of the genre’s defining forces: closing out a resounding year with an equally resounding performance in the capital.

7.5/10

Deafheaven's latest LP, Lonely People with Power, is out now via Roadrunner Records and can be found below.

Photo is courtesy of Liam Stewart whose work can be found here.