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Deafheaven: “If power is influence, we have a responsibility to be as understanding, empathetic and knowledgeable as possible”
Deafheaven frontman George Clarke has grappled with the self-examination through music for years now. Where his Californian pioneers’ icy blackgaze has often felt like an exercise in abstract deflection, however, awesome sixth album Lonely People With Power finds healing fire in its complex interrogation of human relationships and the art of influence over one another...
- Words:
- Sam Law
- Photography:
- Alexis Gross
In the wake of the callousness and carnage of World War II, American psychologist Gustave Gilbert spent years pondering the nature of evil. Writing about his interviews with the surviving Nazi leadership in the chilling 1947 chronicle Nuremberg Diary, he believed that he had found its essence. The one characteristic that connected the war criminals, he discovered, was an inability – or unwillingness – to engage with the plight of their fellow man. Evil was the absence of empathy.
Eighty years later, Gustave’s learnings are being forgotten, with populist politicians around the world preying on human self-centredness once again. Weaponising disdain for the weak and hatred for foreigners to gain a foothold, they then kowtow to rich and influential oligarchs, happy to assist with the manipulation as long as it swells their own immeasurable wealth.
“The fundamental weakness of western civilisation is empathy, the empathy exploit,” preached world’s richest man Elon Musk on CNN recently, explaining why giving basic healthcare to undocumented immigrants is an unconscionable misallocation of public funds. “They’re exploiting a bug in western civilisation, which is the ‘empathy response’…” Scary stuff.
George Clarke isn’t talking specifically about western society’s rightward lurch on Deafheaven’s superb sixth album Lonely People With Power. Indeed, the always coolly intelligent frontman is keen to avoid divisive politics altogether when unpicking the ideas within. But on a macro level the concept of forsaking community for personal advancement could hardly be more relevant.
“I don’t believe in the all-powerful, benevolent world-shaper,” he begins. “When I talk about ‘power’ in relation to this record, I’m really talking about influence. It’s about the power to shape perspective, the power to shape worldview, the responsibility that comes with that. And the extraordinary level of letting go of things around you to be able to attain the degree of wealth and influence that some of these people have. They’re chasing such a solitary objective: one that can only be achieved with a cynicism and sense of emptiness so overwhelmingly huge that you don’t care about the wellbeing of the person next to you. That, to me, represents a spiritual void.”
William Randolph Hearst died on August 14, 1951, but George sees his influence echoing on. Born in Deafheaven’s home base of San Francisco, the newspaper magnate was responsible for spearheading the United States’ sensationalist tabloid press, and ran unsuccessfully for Governor of New York State, Mayor of New York City and President Of The United States through the 1900s. Nominally supporting progressive politics at first, he adopted more conservative, isolationist policies as the 20th century wore on. By the 1930s, he was a vocal supporter of Nazi Germany.
In many ways, William Randolph Hearst is George’s prototypical lonely person with power.
“Hearst’s time as a media titan feels very much like a precursor to a lot of what we’re seeing today,” George says. “These people have always been cut-throat, willing to lie, willing to exaggerate, without any great appreciation of moral boundaries. Hearst’s relationships tended to be both ephemeral and obsessive, but not humanistic. He didn’t care at all about people or the larger mechanisms through which the world operates in a way that was very self-serving, while also being obsessed with the idea of conquering them. It was this strange dichotomy. And it’s a cyclical thing: you can see it again in today’s leaders, where in order to fulfil this lust for control you need an ironic detachment from the world around you, without generosity or humanism.”
Call it psychopathy or sociopathy, it is a personality type gravitationally drawn to domination.
“You need to be anti-community to hoard the most resource and control the most people,” George nods. “A normal person would be baffled by it. They would struggle to comprehend the levels at play. I explain it in the way that if someone gave me a billion dollars and asked me what I’d want to do with it, I wouldn’t know. Frankly, if you’re chasing such goals there isn’t time to connect with your fellow man. There’s no room for empathy in pursuit of something so enormously material.”
“To reach the top, you need to be anti-community and not watch out for other people”
Social media has created the most obvious conflation of money and influence since the height of Hearst’s newspaper era. Not that even Deafheaven can escape its pull. Keen to manage spring touring, summer festivals and more shows in the autumn all after LPWP is out, they’ve devised a blitzkrieg launch campaign between the January 27 announcement and March 28 release. Sean Stout and Chelsea Jade’s striking monochrome video for Magnolia got things rolling, but the series of short clips for each song directed by So Cal/Austin collective Muted Widows – tying, ultimately, into an overarching narrative – more clearly outline the album’s front-to-back brilliance.
Excellent as it is to reach listeners while adding artistic depth, it is counterbalanced by the negative ways Facebook and Instagram, X and TikTok have changed everything. On one level, George sees goalposts shifted for kids in search of fame and fortune.
“Young people have to be forgiven to a certain extent, celebrity culture has always existed and glitz is appealing by its very nature. But where previously you had to sacrifice a lot in the knowledge you probably wouldn’t succeed, now you ‘make it’ in smaller degrees with comments and likes and then monetisation. What was once a dream for some has become a [business] for others.”
Insidious algorithms, twisted digital reality and dead-eyed owners interminably extending their grip, however, can’t be so easily overlooked.
“People ask whether I think that we’re living through an unprecedented moment,” George frowns. “I don’t think we are. So long as media has existed, people have yearned to shape it. But technology has changed that. Social media has this instant, addictive quality. It feels immediate and all-consuming and there are forces trying to emphasise those feelings. It’s a constant barrage of fear-mongering and bad news. People aren’t allowed to relax.”
So when tech billionaires are taking up front-row seats that should have gone to elected officials at a United States presidential inauguration, it’s hardly heartening…
“I’m no historian,” he says. “I’m sure people have exerted similar influence over our leaders before. But it’s hard not to feel like it’s a bit of a mockery. I see it like pharmaceutical CEOs walking into a roomful of junkies addicted to their drugs. At this point, they’re just laughing. What’s done is done. Their influence is so strong, and people are so lost within it, that they don’t need to be shadowy about their intentions any more. Because there are no repercussions…”
Fifteen years into their journey, Deafheaven felt the call to create an album that could define them. Accepting a record deal with legendary metal label Roadrunner offered a fresh start. Performing with acts as varied as Knocked Loose and Interpol, the river of potential new fans to prove themselves to was running deep. And while experimental fifth album Infinite Granite had been a fulfilling indulgence in airier atmospherics – its shoegaze-heavy encapsulation of the stasis of lockdown owing more to My Bloody Valentine and Radiohead than Darkthrone or Bathory – touring its more textural sounds reminded them of a never-lost love of playing fast and hard.
“We decided that we wanted to be the most ourselves that we could be,” George explains of the ambitious approach to Lonely People With Power. “Deafheaven has been a band for long enough that we can self-reference what we have done before. Through previous albums and experiences together, we can begin to digest what exactly this band is. We can even attempt to distil it…”
Coming aboard for Infinite Granite, renowned producer Justin Meldal-Johnsen – veteran of artists like Nine Inch Nails, St. Vincent and The Mars Volta – was taken aback by that album’s soft edges. Safe to say he found the bite he’d expected this time round.
“And then some!” George grins. “I remember the first time we showed him Revelator. He was like, ‘Wow, this doesn’t just meet the heaviness I’d expected, it far exceeds it…’”
Alongside six-stringer Shiv Mehra, drummer Daniel Tracy and bassist Chris Johnson, George takes his lead from guitarist and musical mastermind Kerry McCoy. After the pummelling Magnolia, second single Heathen felt like a conscious effort to reintroduce their avant-garde, post-metal tendencies. Amethyst draws a thread of violet melancholy through its eventual onslaught. Most obviously, the trio of Incidental interludes build a poignant sense of detachment. Boy Harsher vocalist Jae Matthews haunts the second of these like Chelsea Wolfe at her most ethereal. Interpol’s Paul Banks lends his spoken-word to the third, recounting a story of a blushing encounter with a woman ‘on the strip of Ventura’ that is also depicted in the album’s irresistible, enigmatic cover art by Touché Amoré guitarist Nick Steinhardt.
Undeniably, it is George’s return to scourging, blastbeaten black metal in the vein of 2013 classic Sunbather on de facto opener Doberman, the aforementioned Revelator and shapeshifting late epic Winona that most exhilarates.
“I’m inspired by the ferocity,” the singer explains. “It makes me want to be more ferocious. In the same way there was a desire to distil our sound, I felt an urge to distil my lyrical themes. Family, personal experiences with alcohol and addiction, suicidal ideation, relationships with friends and relationships with women have always been touchstones for the band. I thought about what ‘trying to be the most ourselves that we could be’ meant for me. It means to be more direct with those thoughts and themes. Previously I’ve been quite abstract. Here, I’m putting my foot down.”
Narrowed focus makes clear the more intimate aspect of Lonely People With Power. George has always pondered the impact of parents and those with teacherly influence. Sunbather ended with the lament, ‘I am my father’s son / I am no-one / I cannot love / It’s in my blood…’ Magnolia feels like some kind of conciliation. Its title is a reference to the state flower of Mississippi, home to George’s father’s family, where he attended his uncle’s funeral. The lyrics interrogate his uncle’s alcoholism and depression – traits shared with George’s father – and takes stock of shared genetics and lessons handed down with newfound warmth and acceptance: ‘My love is endless / Everything of you is me / Every step is toward the grave / Could it be flesh and blood were all we gave?’
“‘Loneliness’ is also a stand-in for ‘ignorance’,” he unpacks. “When I talk about parents and people like that I feel like most of them don’t know what they should be doing. There’s an element of forgiveness on the record that recognises that, despite the shortcomings or handicaps that our parents or teachers might have in their own lives, often they’re still doing the best they can.”
Elsewhere, the urgent, pulsating Body Behaviour finds an older male role model showing a younger boy pornography as an attempt at bonding. Not maliciously, George insists. Not even creepily. Just a bizarre attempt at sharing knowledge in a way that’s not particularly well thought through. Perhaps another warped rite-of-passage handed down from one generation to the next.
“Honestly, I found it funny that virtually every guy I know has some version of that story, with a father or uncle or older cousin or whoever,” he says. “You end up with this early objectification. It’s a symptom of modern society and [the current standard for] relationships between men…”
Awkward and uncomfortable as topics like that can be, the willingness to confront them is testament to Deafheaven having the courage of their convictions. In a world where populism and influencer culture is reinforcing toxic behaviour and corroding meaningful relationships, there is something to be said for a powerful discussion of masculinity and open self-examination.
“For whatever reason, topics like masculinity are often considered taboo in metal music. I find that so odd. It can be incredibly beneficial to offer a different perspective, break situations down and say, ‘This happened to me when I was young. It was strange. And I can see how it affected me in later life…’ That’s what it takes to become an emotionally healthier person. At the same time, I’m [reluctant to criticise] those bands whose music is full of fantastical subject matter as a method of escapism from the world around us. A lot of listeners – myself included – gravitate towards that kind of elaborate storytelling, so we don’t need to worry about spending our attention on two-minute Andrew Tate videos as we doomscroll through our afternoons.”
Sublimate yourself in the shadier corners of social media and you’ll find an unsettling role-model for many young men: Patrick Bateman. The American Psycho himself, a character created by Brett Easton Ellis to satirise the narcissism of 1980s yuppie America has been reappropriated as the aspirational face of the lone-wolf ‘Sigma Male’. Wealthy. Wrathful. Utterly disconnected from those around him. Yes, some of those sharing clips from Mary Harron’s classic 2000 adaptation are in on the joke. But in a reality where the subject of Patrick Bateman’s own fixation – Donald Trump – sits in the White House, plenty of others would happily cut ties (and throats) to get ahead.
“That sense of cold detachment has always fascinated me,” George says, rolling back the years to early tours where he could have been channelling Bateman onstage. “I like that character, in part because I saw it in myself, and [embracing it] gives me an almost campy outlet for those internalised feelings. That’s a huge element of what makes performance alluring: digging a little deeper, finding those things inside yourself and flipping them inside out for spectacle.”
Dissecting that archetype, issues have gradually resolved for George over the last 15 years.
“If you asked my friends, they’d tell you our relationships have become more ‘real’,” he smiles. “When you’re young, and trying to be accepted, you create these veneers. You develop niceties and performative habits to get from A to B. They come from a base of anxiety and low self-esteem. It was difficult for me to let the mask slip, to show the vulnerability needed for real connection. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve gotten better at being honest. But it’s a journey rather than a destination.”
“Being in Deafheaven is a real gift and has become a necessity for my happiness”
Likewise, Deafheaven itself has transformed from a simple outlet for the ice in his veins into a vital tool to process it. “Early on, I felt like this was a method of expressing myself in ways that I couldn’t otherwise. Now, it’s more like therapy. Taking periods off the road proves how much being out there is legitimately crucial for my happiness. Not just the travel or performance, but getting to meet new people, to experience new cultures, to know my band better – and differently!”
Menace still plays a massive role in Deafheaven’s aura, though. How hard is it to keep hold of that?
“When you’re onstage, you feel a huge amount of power. It’s an ego shot. There is a certain degree of megalomania. I still like to lean into that nefarious character. I see how different those moments in front of big audiences are to my everyday life, and I choose to keep mining that [alter-ego]. The difference in how I see myself now is down to increased self-awareness, and how that character is allowed to break nowadays for very tender, communal, human moments. That could be going into the crowd, holding someone, or being with an overwhelmed fan crying on the barrier. The music is me at my most vulnerable. The performance is me at my most powerful. It’s when that menacing character breaks that I become most myself. If people are really sharing a moment with the singer of Deafheaven, singing lyrics, or holding onto them, they are sharing a moment with George…”
Analysing the interrelationship between creation, performance and personal experience has crystallised the realisation that every artist is, at least to some extent, a lonely person with power.
“If power is influence, we all have a certain amount of it,” George says. “We all have a version of it. This interview is a perfect example. Someone may read what I say and it could somehow shape their opinions. So we have a responsibility to be as understanding, empathetic and knowledgeable as possible. I ask myself how I can be a teacher? But it’s a mystery that’s always evolving.”
“You feel a huge amount of power onstage, it’s an ego shot”
Lonely People With Power’s hardest lesson comes right at its end. Named after Jean Eugène Robert-Houdin’s infamously intricate 19th century disappearing illusion, The Marvelous Orange Tree is a starkly beautiful song about suicide concluding with the ostensibly hopeless lines, ‘Living with this illness / Showing shivering skin / With you, my endless illness / With my endless illness / Walking into blackness.’ Rather than a tumble into the abyss, it is a reminder to always watch your step.
“It’s about how this is an ongoing process,” George signs off, reassuringly at peace. “Things do end, I suppose, but they certainly don’t end now. When you’re assessing [demons] within yourself, it is hard to say, ‘I’m not worried about that anymore!’ or, ‘That’s done!’ It’s important to recognise that the door is always open. That doesn’t mean that you are going to be defeated or to succumb. It’s just knowing that the book is never closed.
“When people think they’ve defeated something – or they choose to ignore it – it can creep back in, in ways they don’t expect. That song is an acknowledgement that these feelings still exist and they always will, and that’s okay. When I need to talk about them, I should, and so I do. I don’t want to face the surprise that could come with abandoning that. Ultimately, this is a record that is centred on empathy and forgiveness. Both for the faults of others and the shortcomings in ourselves. It’s all to do with recognition and understanding. As I explain in the lyrics to Amethyst, nothing here is a condemnation…”
Lonely People With Power is released on March 28 via Roadrunner. Deafheaven will perform at Outbreak in June and at Damnation in November.
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