Richard HolmesConjurer – I (Holy Roar)
Genre: Sludge Metal
Conjurer are hot property right now – well about as hot as an English sludge band can hope to be. And their debut mini album shows that they can live up the hype. Why? Because I is no Eyehategod love-in, or pub-level, by-numbers NOLA worship. Instead, the four tracker is a raging tumult of emotion, a blackened torrent of pile driver riffs that draws from a wide musical landscape.
The Midlands mob have their own dark vision… and there’s an intelligence to their writing that seeps into every note. Sure, there’s downtuned, Sabbathian hooks, but they’re just a part of this outfit’s mighty arsenal; there are hints of early Mastodon and even Gojira in the titanic opener, Behold the Swine, while Scorn’s deft tempo changes amplify the song’s numerous body blows.
And then you have the closer, Frail, which drags I to its pitch black conclusion: a near seven and half minutes of anguish and vein-bursting intensity, its bleakness is its beauty.
Hewn from granite, coated in Brit grit, If I is a taste of what’s to come from Conjurer, we’re in for some real magic.
RUSHONROCK RATED: 8/10 Casting A Spell