Lyrically it digs deeper and far more personally than the debut. All You Will Remember is Dan’s reflection on witnessing his late grandmother’s decade-long battle with dementia. The music is as sombre as the subject matter and also features a haunting spoken-word passage from singer, violinist and composer Alice Zawadzki. ‘Thoughts come to me like whispers and vanish just the same / Faces I have known and loved, replaced by masks of shame,’ she intones through the emotional ebb and flow.
Elsewhere, Suffer Alone channels its bleak sentiment through a sub-three-minute blast of furious hardcore grind that will cause chaos in the pits, while epic closer Cracks In The Pyre takes more than twice as long in a slow wash of carefully crafted noise as it meditates on death and loss.
It might not be a barrel of laughs, but Páthos is certainly a cause for celebration. Having released one of the finest debut albums of recent years, Conjurer have finally followed it up with a set that expands and in some ways improves on that blueprint. They might not be the saviours of anything, but they’re certainly one of the finest metal bands out there right now.
Rating: 4/5
For fans of: Pallbearer, Mastodon, Oathbreaker
Páthos is released on July 1 via Nuclear Blast