The Bad Penny‘s friends at Veil of Sound have assembled a nifty 2025 recap that encompasses the records, concerts and other highlights that the German website’s 10 contributors enjoyed the most last year. Check it out here.
Archive for Deafheaven
Veil of Sound Shares Bad Penny’s Favorite LPs, Gigs, More From 2025
Posted in Lists with tags Agriculture, Chat Pile, Chat Pile and Hayden Pedigo, Cloakroom, Deafheaven, Der Weg Einer Freiheit, Messa on 01/16/2026 by Kurt OrzeckDeafheaven’s ‘Lonely People in Power’: Two Cent Review for Knotfest’s Best LPs of 2025
Posted in Album Reviews, Reviews with tags Deafheaven on 01/06/2026 by Kurt Orzeck
Lonely People with Power delivers a punch that will leave listeners reeling deliriously. Deafheaven’s new record restores Clarke’s black-metal screeches—sometimes at their most ear-shattering yet—while also producing the punchiest hard-rock riffs proliferating the band’s arsenal. Read my new review at Knotfest.com–and also don’t miss my FLOOD interview with frontman George Clarke about Lonely People with Power, as well as my analysis of Deafheaven’s 2017 tour set lists and first-ever show in Boise.
Don’t miss these two other roundups either:
• Friends of The Bad Penny Share Their Top 10 Lists of 2025 Best Albums
• Boise Friends of The Bad Penny Share Their 2025 Top 10 Lists
The Bad Penny’s Top 50 Best LPs of 2025, Pt. 5: Deafheaven, Orbit Culture, Agriculture, Mclusky, Messa
Posted in Lists with tags Agriculture, Deafheaven, For Your Health, Halo Effect, Mclusky, Messa, Orbit Culture, Ossuary, The Armed, Vildhjarta on 01/06/2026 by Kurt Orzeck
A lot of fucked-up up shit happened in the U.S. this year. Way, way too much of it. For many of us Americans who actually carry values in our hearts instead of bloviating about them or slapping bumper stickers on our monster trucks, it was almost too much to bear.
Fortunately, 2025 also saw the release of a staggering number of stellar records, which made the year a little more … well, bearable. Hence, for the first time ever, The Bad Penny is deviating from its usual annual tradition of limiting out favorite listens to just 10 and breaking them into a five-part series containing 10 records per installment.
What follows is the fifth and final batch. (Go here for The Bad Penny‘s favorite albums, #11 through #20; here for #21 through #30; here for #31 through #40; and here for #41 through #50.)
1. Deafheaven – Lonely People With Power (Roadrunner)
• Deafheaven Frontman Dives Deep Into Each Song on New LP
• From the Vault: Deafheaven’s 2017 Tour Setlists and First-Ever Show in Boise – An Analysis
2. Orbit Culture – Death Above Life (Century Media)
• Orbit Culture Try To Keep Momentum Going With Next LP
Continue readingPost-Trash Publishes Bad Penny’s List of 2025’s Top 20 Best Records
Posted in Lists with tags Agriculture, Deafheaven, For Your Health, Halo Effect, Mclusky, Messa, Orbit Culture, Ossuary, The Armed, Vildhjarta on 12/20/2025 by Kurt OrzeckThanks to Post-Trash for posting my top 20 favorite records of the year as part of its staff picks roundup.
Friends of The Bad Penny Share Their Top 10 Lists of 2025 Best Albums
Posted in Lists with tags Clipse, Curran Reynolds, Dave Clifford, Deafheaven, Heavy Halo, Justin Sinkovich, OvO, Pixel Grip, Primitive Man, The Grasshopper Lies Heavy on 12/15/2025 by Kurt Orzeck
The Bad Penny is rolling out its favorite albums of 2025 in five installments this year, with the first and second batches having already dropped. While the other three will plop down imminently, we’re smashing the self-indulgence and monotony by inviting some of our favorite industry folks to share their own top 10s with us and, by extension, you.
To warn off any complaints about corruption, misdealing or the coveted line in the sand between journalists and press folks, we laid down a strict ground rule: PR reps were not allowed to include any of their clients, past or present, on their lists.
We’re delighted by the picks that the participants received, as they run the genre gamut and include many albums of which The Bad Penny wasn’t even aware. Especially striking is that, among the combined 160 titles chosen by the … let’s dust off the old calculator here … 16 contributors, a tiny fraction appear on more than one list: Pixel Grip, Deafheaven, Clipse and Primitive Man. And each of those titles are only listed twice.
Thanks oodles to Tim Anderl of Sweet Cheetah PR, Caroline Borolla of Clarion Call Media, Brendan Bourke of The Syn, Dave Clifford of US/THEM Group, George Corona III of Terrorbird Media, Bruno Dorella and Stefania Pedretti of OvO, Brandon Gallagher of Trace Amount, Eddie Gobbo of Something Is Waiting, Austin Griswold of Secret Service Publicity, McKeever and Gosteffects of Heavy Halo, Curran Reynolds of Body Stuff (and The Chain), Michel Rowland of UTM Music Group, Justin Sinkovich of Solid Brass Records, Dan Volohov of Discipline PR, James Woodard of The Grasshopper Lies Heavy and Will Yarbrough of Season of Mist – not only for taking the time and care to craft such thoughtful top 10s and share them, but helping this website triple its UVs this year over last – and provide critical support to yours truly over the course of a 28-year career as a music journalist, rock critic and soon-to-be-lobotomized AI automaton.
Without further ado, here are the lists of the top 10 albums released in 2025 that some of The Bad Penny‘s favorite publicists and musicians graciously shared with us.
Continue readingFrom the Vault: Deafheaven’s 2017 Tour Setlists and First-Ever Show in Boise – An Analysis
Posted in Concert Reviews, Essays, Reviews with tags Bosse-de-Nage, Deafheaven, George Clarke, Mogwai, Shiv Mehra, Treefort, Treefort Music Fest on 09/22/2025 by Kurt Orzeck
Deafheaven’s setlist from their show at Mardi Gras in Boise on 3.25.17
When Deafheaven played their first show in Boise on March 25 – at Mardi Gras, a venue typically reserved for wedding functions – they provided the five-day Treefort Music Fest with its only dose of shoe-gazing black metal. Continue reading
Deafheaven Frontman Dives Deep Into Each Song on New LP
Posted in Interviews with tags Deafheaven, George Clarke on 03/28/2025 by Kurt Orzeck
In my latest check-in with Deafheaven vocalist George Clarke, he provides a remarkably transparent account of each song featured on the new album that the Bay Area’s best band released today, the brilliantly titled Lonely People in Power. Read the full account courtesy of FLOOD.
Deafheaven, Whores, Elder, Intronaut Share Tips For Saving Money
Posted in Interviews with tags Deafheaven, Elder, Intronaut, Whores on 08/06/2024 by Kurt Orzeck
My series on how bands can break through without breaking the bank continues with clever, resourceful and amusing advice from rad bands including Deafheaven, Whores, Elder and Intronaut. Go to New Noise and get schooled.
Top 100 Best Live Performances Of 2023: Mars Volta, Be’lakor, Hexis, Covet
Posted in Concert Reviews, Reviews with tags Be’lakor, Cloak, Covet, Deafheaven, Hexis, Jason Isbell, Jesus Piece, Mars Volta, Portrayal of Guilt, Show Me the Body on 01/17/2024 by Kurt Orzeck
Treefort 2017: The Ultimate, Gorilla-Size Review
Posted in Concert Reviews, Reviews with tags Deafheaven, Doug Martsch, Grouper, Magic Sword, This Will Destroy You, Treefort on 04/12/2017 by Kurt Orzeck
Treefort 2017 delivered Deafheaven, Mac DeMarco, Grouper, Doug Marsch — and set a gorilla on the loose.
Check out my exhaustive concert review of Boise’s five-day indie-rock festival, Treefort — starring Deafheaven, Grouper, This Will Destroy You, Doug Martsch, Magic Sword and more — on Drowned in Sound.
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