Label - Nuclear Blast
Release Date- 1st July 2022
Words- Tony Bliss
Just over four years ago, Conjurer released their debut LP ‘Mire’, and swiftly established themselves as a band with phenomenal potential (not that their 2016 EP ‘I’ hadn't turned a few heads previously mind you). Not only this, but the universal acclaim that followed saw them situated in the enviable position of being the next great hope of the UK heavy music scene. Of course, what comes with that is the kind of sky-high expectations that have proved to derail so many aspiring young hopefuls before them. With the widespread support of the metal world firmly in place however, ‘Pathos’ arrives and casually decimates the bands previous achievements to date, their post-everything approach retooled and freshly hewn from that same genre-vaulting formula that has got so many tongues wagging and ears pricked in the underground and beyond.
Opener ‘It Dwells’ lulls us with a brief acoustic refrain before hurling down that somehow already classic-Conjurer sounding onslaught, the song moving between melody and atmosphere with a slight of hand usually the reserve of seasoned veterans, and containing at least three soul-devouring riffs that, just one of which, lesser bands could build a whole career around (speaking of riffs, also see penultimate track ‘In Your Wake’ for the most straight-forwardly doom-laden, Iommian worship we have heard from the band yet). Recent single ‘Rot’ follows with its grim blackened sludge denouncement - and it is gruesomely, horrifically heavy.
So far, so Conjurer, so brilliant. But it is as we reach the likes of ‘All You WIll Remember’ and the frankly stunning ‘Those Years, Condemned’ where the bands new-found dynamic maturity really comes to the fore, the formers barrel chested clean hooks and stately melodic ebb and flow perhaps as commanding and intelligently constructed as anything on this record or indeed before, and especially stirring given the subject matter involved (the song deals with guitarist/vocalist Dan Nightingale’s late grandmothers decline due to dementia). ‘Those Years…’ is just thrillingly unpredictable, a shape-shifting behemoth that whilst being flat-out progressive and at turns subtly beautiful, somehow manages at the same time to be sinew-wrenchingly extreme.
Beyond sub-three-minute hardcore fire-storm ‘Suffer Alone’, Pathos revels in its own density; a slower, darker realization of the bands sonic blueprint and a record that, when given enough time, reveals itself to be an endlessly rewarding, cliche free and wildly distinctive extreme metal odyssey, double-dipped in riff fuelled enormity and as full-hearted as it is tooth-rattlingly intense. Finally, we have another reason to get excited about what else Conjurer can deliver in the future. For now though, four years of pent-up riffs will more than sustain us.
9/10
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