That’s how long it took Midlands extreme metallers Conjurer to craft Páthos, the follow up to their breakout debut album Mire. That album catapulted the four piece from a hotly-tipped band that gigged together on the weekend to an international tour de force, landing them accolades and support slots they thought they’d never achieve in their career, let alone on a single record. It took, in effect, the forced lockdown of world and cancellation of any and all touring plans to force them back into writing mode. Of course, with the runaway success of their debut, the question on everyone’s lips was whether they could top such a fantastic album. Everyone else’s – but not the four lads from Rugby.
In summary, Páthos takes everything that made Mire great and stretches it, pushes it into new directions and melds in new, experimental flourishes that they perhaps would’ve never thought to use beforehand without such an extended period of downtime to truly explore what they thought Conjurer was, or should be. Mire part 2 this most certainly isn’t; instead, it’s a far more diverse, but no less emotionally or sonically devastating listen.
Lead single ‘It Dwells’ opens, a jangly acoustic lick creating a false sense of security before – surprise! – Conjurer drop an almighty, off-kilter riff with their dual-vocal attack that spirals into a neck-snapping rhythm. That’s just the first minute; as ‘It Dwells’ progresses, the band fold in emotional swells, slow crushes and softer, disquieting moments as brief reprieves from the turmoil. ‘Rot’ acts as a companion piece, taking the themes of fear and anxiety of ‘It Dwells’ and instead giving those emotions the reins. It’s ugly, twisted and bitter, with creeping ambience opening into its sledgehammer riffs.
So far, so good, so Conjurer. But ‘All You Will Remember’ upends expectations; the band foray into clean vocals and there’s post metal leanings reminiscent of their beloved Pijn collaboration Curse These Metal Hands. Exploring themes of dementia and its impact on those around the sufferer, grief and sadness seeps out of its every pore. It culminates in a post-rock crescendo and another first; singer Alice Zawadzki lending her voice to a poetry reading as the song reaches its emotionally devastating peak.
Similarly, ‘Those Years, Condemned’ channels the gloomy weight of ‘Hollow’ or ‘Thankless’, its slow-burn opening giving way to desolate roars and howls, often juxtaposed against each other. It plumbs the crushing depths of feeling to exhausting effect; even in its most ferocious moments such as the blastbeat-laden middle section, it’s still utterly engrossing, a taxing listen for all the right reasons.
While much of Páthos dials up the atmosphere and the moodiness present on Mire, folding in these new experimentations, that’s not to say the band can’t still drop the most absurdly heavy breakdowns. ‘Suffer Alone’ is, at two and a half minutes, practically a grindcore song by their standards and rages throughout, blackened riffs coupled to vitriolic shrieks but halfway through, the band slow down to a comparably glacial pace to gleefully batter eardrums. ‘Basilisk’ ushers in a truly disgusting slam in its closing minute, dual vocals and a brutal hammering of guitars and ‘In Your Wake’ opens with the kind of visceral bludgeoning not out of place in a gladiatorial arena.
By the time they close with the towering ‘Cracks In The Pyre’, a meditation on death and the afterlife whose opening ambience suggests a loosening of Páthos’ emotional vice grip before unfurling into the kind of death/doom that leaves both aural and emotional bruises, there’s only one real option; listen again. Páthos is so richly layered and textured, much like its arresting artwork, that there’s simply too much to take in on a single listen. Where Mire announced a band with what seemed like a firm grip on their identity to the world, Páthos proves there’s hidden depths the likes of which we’re only just beginning to see. It’s moodier, more atmospheric but just as likely to drop an atom bomb of a breakdown as it is somber emotional reflection; Conjurer are simply a cut above the rest.