![[FREE EBOOKS] Modern Generative AI with ChatGPT and OpenAI Models, Offensive Security Using Python & Four More Best Selling Titles](https://www.javacodegeeks.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/jcg-logo.jpg){kind=logo}
.webp?#)
Deafheaven, Gatecreeper & Trauma Ray’s two-night NYC takeover in review & pics
Deafheaven celebrated their great new album across two packed NYC shows, with help from melodic death-metallers Gatecreeper and heavy shoegazers Trauma Ray.
Deafheaven vocalist George Clarke told Kerrang! that doing the Sunbather 10th anniversary tour in late 2023 (and the tour with Knocked Loose that followed) “reinvigorated that spirit of playing fast and hard” after going in a clean-vocal, non-metal direction on 2021’s Infinite Granite, and Deafheaven brought that reinvigorated spirit to their excellent new album, Lonely People With Power. For me, the Sunbather tour stood out because instead of inducing nostalgia for all the times I saw Deafheaven in the Sunbather era, it left me feeling in awe of how far this band has come. It set the tone for the tour that Deafheaven are on right now, which finds them playing almost the entire new album plus a few choice older cuts and feels like classic Deafheaven from start to finish.
As much as Sunbather is still the classic and its opening track/lead single “Dream House” got the crowd going crazier than any other song at Warsaw in Brooklyn last night (5/16), Lonely People With Power feels like the culmination of everything Deafheaven have ever done and it actually represents Deafheaven better than Sunbather does at this point. And with an album like that to support, Deafheaven delivered everything that they’re capable of at last night’s show. We got the gorgeous, post-rock/shoegaze/black metal fusions like “Dream House,” Sunbather‘s title track, and the new album’s “Amethyst,” which closed the pre-encore set, and which George called his favorite song on the new LP and said sums up the meaning of the entire album. We got Deafheaven at their heaviest, like when they played the new album’s lead single “Magnolia” right into New Bermuda‘s “Brought to the Water.” And even after making a “return to form” after a divisive stylistic departure, Deafheaven didn’t shun Infinite Granite. George broke out his clean vocals for that album’s highlight “Great Mass of Color” and took it right into the new album’s “Heathen,” a fantastic song that kinda sounds like a cross between Infinite Granite and Sunbather. Throughout it all, Deafheaven lived up to their long-standing reputation as a masterful live act. On the instrumental side, they’re locked in, effortlessly confident, and always nailing a mix of serenity and blunt force. Even their new touring guitarist Ian Waters (who’s filling in for Shiv Mehra) was so on point that you’d have assumed he was a longtime member of the band if you didn’t know any better. And then there’s George Clarke, stomping around the stage and commanding the crowd like a beast on a spiritual quest. From looking around at the rest of the crowd a few times, I don’t think I was alone in feeling entranced for the entire show.
Gatecreeper (photo by Amanda M Hatfield)
On top of their own great set, Deafheaven put together a well-curated pair of openers that matched the two extremes of their own sound. Up first was Trauma Ray, a Deftones-y heavy shoegaze band who treated the already-packed early crowd to hazy vibes and a towering wall of sound. Then after them was Gatecreeper, the Arizona death metal band who are fresh off taking a more melodic turn on 2024’s Dark Superstition, one of our favorite albums of last year. The set was heavy on Dark Superstition, plus well-matched older cuts like “Flamethrower” and “Ruthless,” and we also got a nice change of pace when they broke out into the metallic hardcore fury of “Rusted Gold,” “Starved,” and “Sick of Being Sober” from 2021’s My War-inspired An Unexpected Reality. The melodic stuff in particular makes Gatecreeper seem like a band that could be headlining venues twice this size on their own, and they put on a set that felt as lively and crowd-pleasing as you want from a band with badass, riffy metal anthems like this one.
The Warsaw show was the second of two nights in NYC, following an Irving Plaza show the night before. (When George asked the Warsaw crowd who went to both nights, he got some pretty audible cheers.) Amanda Hatfield shot the Irving show, and you can see more of her pictures below, along with some videos and Deafheaven and Gatecreeper’s setlists…
.@gatecreeper, opening for Deafheaven at Warsaw In Brooklyn – 5/15/25 pic.twitter.com/5mf52NAWKv— BrooklynVegan (@brooklynvegan) May 16, 2025
Deafheaven Setlist
Incidental I
Doberman
Magnolia
Brought to the Water
Sunbather
The Garden Route
Great Mass of Color
Heathen
Amethyst
Encore:
Incidental II
Revelator
Dream House
Winona
Gatecreeper Setlist
A Chilling Aura
Caught in the Treads
Dead Star
Ruthless
The Black Curtain
Patriarchal Grip
From the Ashes
Rusted Gold
Starved
Sick of Being Sober
Flesh Habit
Mistaken For Dead
Flamethrower
