11. Conjurer - "Páthos"

Conjurer are quite simply undefinable. They still reside within the staple of heavy music, but what they actually trying to do with it is simply quite extraordinary. They seem intent on turning left where other bands would veer right and they unashamedly ignore metal’s well-worn clichés. As I said, this is still unashamedly heavy metal but with an added frisson and level of creativity that is completely alien to the genre.

I suspect most people reading this have been, like me, listening to metal for most of their adult lives. We know how it goes, we know the formula, we know the score. We can identify a death growl from a menacing goblin-like black metal shriek. We understand the fundamental differences between the slow reverberations of Doom and the bombastic exhibitionism of power metal. 

Conjurer take all those cultural cornerstones and shoves them in the bin. They are not interested in fitting into a particular genre or style. Instead, they are carving out something highly unique within the general confines of heavy. “Páthos” is extraordinary, and I don’t think I’m even halfway there to fully comprehending its brilliance yet. It uses shading and textures in a quite revolutionary way. We are used to a very clear distinction between heavy and not heavy. They blur the lines in a way that I, quite simply, haven’t seen before. 

It’s heavy but it’s also beautifully contoured. In many cases, in our genre heaviness is there because simply that’s what we do. Here it plays an important and crucial part in the musical DNA and ”Páthos” elegantly swoops between tempos and temperament. I could throw around more superlatives, but this album just has to be heard, so go and listen.