ConjurerPáthos

Nuclear Blast
1st July, 2022
10
A Total Triumph!

Páthos is derived from a Greek word that translates as suffering or deep sorrow, and if there’s a current musical embodiment of that extreme emotional state then Conjurer has invoked it.

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Páthos is only the second album for this British band, but they are already masters of their game.


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It Dwells opens on acoustic minor-key strumming reminiscent of Opeth’s The Drapery Falls before exploding into a storm of hardcore sludge, apocalyptic doom and dreary post-metal like Converge and Pallbearer being stitched together with pieces of early Mastodon and Agalloch. The riffs carry enormous weight, the tortured vocals of Dan Nightgale and Brady Deeprose as synchronous as their crushing guitars as they bring down walls of misery and torment in All You Will Remember, Nightgale’s harrowing reflection on a personal experience of dementia, made even more haunting by Alice Zawadski’s spoken word passage. Rot tears out of ambient dissonance like the sound of an oncoming battle, but Conjurer’s clever and intuitive use of atmosphere and dynamics never allow for their sheer heaviness to completely take over. 

Páthos is not an easy album to navigate, but for those brave enough to visit, it is one of the finest examples of metal to have been wrought so far this year.

That facet alone simply would not convey the almost visceral sense of dread this band seek to awaken. Conjurer call on a magician’s kit of tremolo picking, sweeping post-black metal vistas and detuned breakdowns, labyrinthine time-changes and even Suffer Alone’s three minutes of violent hardcore grind to create the murky and occasionally suffocating despondency of Páthos. Appropriately, it is Cracks in the Pyre where Conjurer brings all of their instruments of despair to bear, a climactic bombast of melancholia and slowly waking hope to bring the journey to a close. Páthos is not an easy album to navigate, but for those brave enough to visit, it is one of the finest examples of metal to have been wrought so far this year.

STANDOUT TRACKS: All You Will Remember, Basilisk, Cracks in the Pyre
STICK THIS NEXT TO: Pallbearer, Converge, Primitive Man 


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