ALBUM REVIEW: The Great Conjuration – Heads For The Dead
Featuring members of bands like WOMBBATH, REVEL IN FLESH and SENTIENT HORROR, HEADS FOR THE DEAD boasts some of the most talented and well regarded musicians within the death metal underground amongst its ranks. With two full-length albums and last year’s Slash ‘n’ Roll EP under their belts, the band have been quickly gaining traction, getting better and more polished with each subsequent release. Their latest album, The Grand Conjuration, is yet another brilliant slab of horror-inspired death metal that does an excellent job of bridging the gap between older and newer styles within the genre, resulting in a diverse and tight sounding record.
Rather than ease the listener into the album, The Jewel Of The Seven Stars goes straight for the jugular, with weighty, groove-laden guitars and thunderous drums creating a huge sound right out of the gate. The feral snarl of the vocals carves an acerbic furrow through the rest of the music, serving as an opening blast of dense, old school death metal. The Beast takes up a similar formula, albeit with a shriller vocal delivery and a more frenetic pace which lends a chaotic edge to proceedings. The music is still intensely focused and tinged liberally with slick melodies, making for a catchier take on the style of the opener.
The Covenant utilises a slower tempo, fuller chords and more percussive drumming for a cavernous, dramatic sound that, although still having a classic death metal flavour, turns this into a more grandiose affair. Rotten Bastard, much like The Beast, is a short, sharp shock of a track with harsher vocals and urgent, energetic guitars and bass, with a dirty, sludgy bassline filling out the already substantial sound to make for another brief yet brilliant slab of extremity. The Breaking Wheel is a rumbling juggernaut of a song, with precise, punishing drums, meaty guitars and a monstrous vocal delivery that really elevates the track to a new level. It’s belligerent, rhythmic death metal done expertly, and hard not to get drawn in by.
The Bloodline continues in a similar vein, with huge riffs and jarring harmonies being the musical highlights here. The drums and bass set a foreboding backdrop to some truly visceral guitar work, which ranges from crisp melodic flourishes to grating, hard rhythms which help make this one of the most expansive pieces of songwriting on the record up to this point. After this song, the tone of the album begins to shift significantly as World Serpent Dominion, a bombastic, sprawling monolith, lurches into gear. Keyboards, which have been used sparingly up to this point, suddenly begin to make their presence felt in the forefront of the mix, adding an extra, atmospheric layer that takes the already fantastic music that accompanies it to a whole new dimension and changes the overall sound of the album from here on.
The Curse is, if anything, even more cinematic than its predecessor, with a beguiling blend of FX, keyboards and tempo changes keeping the listener guessing as it ebbs and flows from one passage to the next, embracing a slightly more symphonic approach without fully sacrificing the intensity that the death metal injects into this. The album’s penultimate track is a brilliant cover of the classic ROKY ERICKSON track Bloody Hammer. Like all good covers, this does a great job of capturing the core essence of the original, whilst simultaneously injecting the band’s own style into the mix, most notably with the throaty gutturals, chunkier tone and the impressive flourishes that are added to the solos, serving as a brilliant twist on an already fantastic song.
The album concludes with The Fog, a far slower offering with heady keyboards and lots of harmonised guitar lines. This one’s perhaps the album’s most melodic song, with a meaty rhythmic undercurrent giving it a heavier edge to close the record on one of its more impressive notes.
When an album by a band featuring musicians from various more established acts comes out, it’s often tempting to dismiss the music within it as the cast off that the members’ other bands were not interested in using, but that is certainly not the case here. This is a band that draws heavily from old school death metal for its influences, but definitely isn’t afraid to throw in some more modern and polished elements, as well as a heavy use of keyboards, into the songwriting mix. It gives this a fresh and different sound that is very easy to get drawn in by, making it stand out from the death metal pack for all the right reasons.
Rating: 8/10
The Great Conjuration is out now via Transcending Obscurity Records.
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