Lucy Dunnet
Has it really been almost a year since Conjurer released Unself? So large was the meteor-sized crater of choking post-sludge and untamed meatiness of their third album that it still feels like only yesterday that they set it loose upon the world. Since appearing on the scene in 2018 and instantly becoming one of the most talked-about bands of the metal town, Conjurer is a name you hear whispered in dark corners, over bar stools, and mid-headbang. The Warwickshire four-piece have spent the past year on all kinds of stages, from Damnation festival to their own UK headline tour, out in the States and then back for a slew of European festivals, culminating in their support slot on this tour with Gaerea.
Every breakdown, every tunnelling surge of speed, and every screaming drawl from vocalists Brady Deeprose and Dani Nightingale hits like a crack in your oxygen tank. Bassist Conor Marshall windmills so consistently throughout their set it’s like he’s the last renewable energy source standing in a bitter dystopian world. While they may create an atmosphere of harrowing isolation, it’s not without a serious, stirring punch. When Dani introduces ‘Let Us Live’, it’s to announce that this one goes out to the trans community. The melancholic guitar intro is as much a lullaby as it is a lament and softens the blow of the sheer emotional weight dripping off Dani’s shattering vocals. Brady speaks only to welcome the crowd and then thank them at the end, before drifting off the stage. In an interview with Kerrang Magazine last year, Dani said of their album Unself, “It’s about all the other people who don’t have the opportunity to get up and scream onstage. I want this to give those people a voice, essentially.” And that is exactly what they do tonight.
The stage’s backdrop becomes a blown-up image of Gaerea’s latest album, Loss, but in the process of blowing it up, it looks less like a figure being beamed up in a yellow shaft of light out of ominous marshlands and more like the Spanish flag has been rotated 90 degrees and the coat of arms has been replaced with a cutout of a man. This doesn’t lessen the dramatic start to their set, fortunately, since as soon as the first note from Luminary rings out and the lights take a cinematic turn, the Islington Assembly Hall fizzles with bated breath and phones raised in the air.
Aside from the blossoming of alternative, atmospheric and metalcore tendrils from their black metal roots, by far one of the most exciting things about Gaerea is how much onstage charisma oozes from their masked frontman, Alpha. From a crowd this size, you can’t quite appreciate the patterns on their masks, so it really does appear to be a band of black shadows. And yet, the emotion, the humour, and the dazzling quirkiness of Alpha, who dashes about the stage as if possessed by a spider that has inhabited the body of a ballerina, is as good an argument as any for why masks don’t have to mean removal of all personality from a band who’ve chosen the masked life.
“I don’t know if you’ve been with us for the past ten years, but it’s a dream to play London,” Alpha says, partially hidden behind the wall of hazy red light that engulfs their stage. Pits and even a wall of death grind away as the Portuguese metallers dance through a set made up predominantly of their newest material, with only one track, ‘Laude’, off their 2022 album, Mirage, paying homage to their black metal past. Cyclone is a torrent of blast beats, bouncing rhythms and vocals that hit unfathomable growling depths, then mellow out into something angelically sombre. A sombreness that’s captured even more introspectively in Submerged, a song that shows just how much Gaerea have decided to play with their sound, swinging between bludgeoning intervals and melodic moments of whispering calm. “This is the end of a long three months,” admits Alpha, before thanking by name every single person in their team, to an uproar of cheers from the crowd.
Where Conjurer’s thick vortex of chugging and unsettling emotional intensity has the singular ability to evaporate the world around them and turn a 950-capacity room into a one-on-one moment of intimacy, Gaerea explode onto an arena stage. With their black metal veil blowing in a modern metalcore experimental wind, the five masked figures welcome London into their world with a headline performance of blissfully blinding magnitude. One can only hope they were served the best of the tastiest pies on their tour of the UK (they’re Portuguese and love to eat) – because they deserve nothing less.
