Review Summary: We find reasons to leave, but stay intertwined
Surprise-dropped with the confidence of a band that has long overtaken the campaign for attention,
At Work in the Fields of the Bomb is three tracks of Deafheaven contemplating the abrasive and directly confrontational. This EP, borrowing its title from Robert Del Tredici’s 1987 photographic study of the nuclear weapons industry, slightly shies away from the band’s mid-career shoegaze warmth with a return to turbulent black metal as they know it, in what might be among their most condensed and aggressive output in a good decade. Opener “Hunter” brings on fast-paced beats, sharp riffing and George Clarke at a devilish register, backed by symphonic arrangements that reincarnate a form of Deafheaven that I am not sure existed even in the band’s past. At 13 minutes of duration, “Sorry Laid the Hearth” builds with the accumulative logic that their long-form compositions have always demonstrated, finally surrounded by an inescapable darkness that I have always been secretly hoping they’d go for, sooner or later. The track gets more and more unhinged as it progresses, especially from the middle and toward the end. Tending to noise electronics and a gut-wrenching vocal performance in its final moments, it’s definitely the highlight moment of the EP, which makes me think how much I’d love a whole album in the vein of these two tracks. In between them is the ambient instrumental, “Three Princes”, which offers a three-minute breather that you’ll probably need, after sustaining this new material’s intensity. The EP carries the weight that
Lonely People With Power kept at arm’s length, an album I enjoyed thoroughly after having slightly lost contact with the band for many years prior. It’s still not clear if
At Work in the Fields of the Bomb was a one-off excursion or an indication of Deafheaven’s current state of mind, but “only the gods know for certain. All the rest of us can do is pray”.
