Conjurer - Unself album review. Words spewed forth by Mark Jenkins.
Conjurer - Unself album review. Words spewed forth by Mark Jenkins.
Conjurer - Unself
(Nuclear Blast)
There's a moment about two minutes into "Hang Them In Your Head" where everything collapses inward before detonating outward—a gut-punch transition that encapsulates what Conjurer have been chasing across three albums: the space between suffocation and release, the razor's edge where brutality becomes catharsis. Unself, their third full-length and most uncompromising statement yet, exists entirely in that uncomfortable in-between, refusing the tidy compartmentalisation of "post-metal" or "sludge" to instead carve out something more feral and urgent.
Since 2018's Mire established their bone-crushing bona fides and 2022's Páthos expanded their atmospheric palette, the Rugby quartet have been steadily dismantling whatever expectations we've placed on them. Unself completes that demolition. This isn't evolution—it's exorcism. Vocalist/guitarist Dan Nightingale has described the album as the most personal thing they've committed to tape, threading their non-binary awakening and ADHD diagnosis through riffs that sound like Neurosis and Converge locked in a cage match. But what elevates this beyond confessional heavy music is how the band translates internal chaos into structural violence—songs that lurch and heave with the unpredictability of a panic attack, where the heaviest moments aren't the blast beats but the silences that precede them.
"Let Us Live" exemplifies this suffocating restraint. Built on a doom-crawl foundation that recalls Isis at their most oceanic, the track uses space as a weapon—Brady Deeprose's guitar lines snake through the murk while Nightingale's vocals oscillate between guttural despair and desperate clean passages that feel like someone clawing toward the surface. It's the sound of survival, not triumph, and that distinction matters. This is music for the disillusioned and displaced, the ones navigating identity in a world designed to flatten difference. When Nightingale screams "let us live," it's not a request—it's a demand against erasure.
The production choices across Unself reveal a band confident enough to let songs breathe even as they bludgeon. Tracks like "The Searing Glow" and "There Is No Warmth" balance crushing sludge grooves with angular, almost mathcore detours that prevent the album from settling into predictable rhythms. There's a weird hardcore energy here—think early Botch's calculated dissonance filtered through the UK's muddier, grittier tradition. Riffs don't just pummel; they contort, twisting familiar post-metal architecture into stranger shapes. Jan Krause's bass work deserves specific mention for anchoring the chaos, providing the low-end anchor that lets the guitars spiral into abstraction without losing heft.
What makes Unself essential isn't just its sonic heaviness—though make no mistake, this is punishingly heavy music—but its emotional honesty. In an era of overproduced "extreme" music designed for algorithm-friendly playlists, Conjurer sound genuinely dangerous, like they're working through something in real time. The album's title itself is a challenge: to shed the constructed self, the performative identity, and confront whatever raw nerve lies beneath. It's a fitting thesis for a band that's never seemed interested in playing it safe.
By the time closer "This World is Not My Home" fades out—and even that ending refuses a clean resolution—Unself leaves you hollowed out and strangely invigorated. This is the rare heavy album that earns its emotional weight through craft rather than volume, where every crushing riff serves the larger narrative of dismantling and rebuilding. Conjurer haven't just raised the bar for UK extreme music; they've shattered it and rebuilt something more honest from the shards.
Essential for fans of: Neurosis, Converge, Cult of Luna, Gojira, and anyone who believes heavy music should hurt in the best way.
Rating: 9/10
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