Album review: Conjurer – Unself

Good as Conjurer’s last album was, 2022’s Páthos, it was also in some way lacking. Their Mire debut in 2018 had announced them, with no small amount of excitement, as one of the finest heavy bands this country had produced for quite some time. With expert flair with big riffs, technical twists, bottom-end doom-outs, atmosphere and sheer energy, it found supporters in everyone from Trivium to Biffy Clyro. As we say, the second crack was good, but that connection wasn’t quite there.

Unself suffers not this problem. As the delicate acoustic intro strums and fragile, cracked vocals of the opening title-track are engulfed by a wall of ultra-heavy guitar and a pained scream, it’s an announcement that you’re about to meet a bigger, better, emotionally deeper Conjurer. When a blastbeat kicks up a tornado and sucks you dizzyingly in one song later on All Apart, it’s all underlined.

Throughout, it dances Converge-like between heaviness in its myriad forms. The slo-mo slugging that had them erroneously bracketed as a doom outfit early on has become even heavier, lower, more crushing – take the agonising Foreclusure. The bursts of speed, meanwhile, are even more disorienting, adding as much turbulence to The Searing Glow as they do powerful thrust. When they hit full-chug on Hang Them In Your Head, it only serves to flex just how accurate their wrecking ball power has become.

This is all buttressed with threads of melody that bring in the soul of the album. Singer/guitarist Brady Deeprose recently joked to K! that this element resulted in a (brilliant) working title of Pallbearer? I Hardly Knew Her! (LOL), but it also adds articulacy to the record’s themes of disconnection and not belonging.

Brady’s opposite number Dani Nightingale has, since Conjurer’s last album, learned that they are non-binary, as well as being diagnosed with autism, something they say has explained and focused so much of their world. The musical shifts (and in the artwork) from heavy to honey, light to dark, gentle to overpowering, speak to this sense of separation with a raw vitality, particularly on the soaring Let Us Live. On closer This World Is Not My Home, meanwhile, the massive, heavy (and, indeed, Pallbearer-ish) melodies bring the whole thing to a close with a defiant, clear catharsis.

It’s brilliant. As music, it is an emotional, deeply personal expression that carries with it the weight of emotion and humanity. Just as great, it’s a reminder of just what a special band Conjurer are. Unself? This is their true form.

Verdict: 4/5

For fans of: Pallbearer, Converge, YOB

Unself is released on October 24 via Nuclear Blast

Read this next:

• “I want to reach out to the people that don’t feel they’re seen”: How Conjurer crafted their most direct album ever
• From Converge to Paramore: The icons who inspired Heriot’s Debbie Gough
• Pallbearer: “The pain is quieter now. It’s no longer a literal throbbing in my chest”