Conan: Back In The Saddle
Liverpool’s CONAN have been a fixture of the UK’s live scene since 2012, when their debut full-length Monnos established them as Britain’s next big doom metal band. They pummel crowds big and small with their teeth-rattling, heavier-than-thou sound: inspiring slow-motion waves of banging heads as they go. Their seemingly non-stop reign of terror on the road was brought to a standstill in 2020, and things have been quiet in the CONAN camp ever since. We were there as they returned to the stage at Bloodstock Festival, and took the chance to have a quick catch-up with the ‘Caveman Battle Doom’ progenitor himself, Jon Davis.
“We had to cut off a few days of the tour and we thought well, we don’t want to piss anyone off,” explains Jon on the topic of the near-miss that was their summer UK tour, which was another casualty of wavering government guidelines. “In the end we had to move the whole thing to November. We have to respect these things, but of course we’re looking forward to getting back out there,” he says with a firm smile.
Some bands took the pandemic as an opportunity to lock themselves away and hammer out some more material, but for CONAN that just wasn’t possible. “COVID-19 made it more difficult because, all of a sudden, we couldn’t rehearse together,” he tells us. “Our drummer Johnny [King] lives in Ireland, and for a long time it wasn’t possible to work around the border restrictions, so we’ve been working on the new album for two and a half years now. I might write a riff at home, but I don’t like doing vocals on my own and the vocals often start the riff for me. If I’m doing vocals I have to be screaming and shouting over the guitars and drums.”
CONAN have gradually moved away from the droning, glacial riffing which defined their debut EP Horseback Battle Hammer. Nowadays, they’re experimenting with more mid-paced material and even venturing into outright speed. “We’ll go with the flow once we’re in the studio,” Jon assures us. “The stuff we already have is more or less what you’d expect of us, but we do have a few surprises. Usually the studio is where things get more interesting, and we’ll definitely be adding some faster bits too.” Paincantation surprised us all when Existential Void Guardian was released: a grindcore song played with CONAN’s signature molasses-thick tone. “That song came out of nowhere. That was me playing guitar fast and Johnny playing on top, and so we just recorded it. We love playing it live. When we play that after a CONAN set it really wakes people up!”
For a lot of bands Bloodstock Festival was an opportunity to blow away the cobwebs in front of an appreciative home crowd, and CONAN are no exception. “This is our first show back, and we’re dead excited. We were dying to get to play here this summer, just like everyone else, and for the show to finally be here, and for it to be almost normal to be sat here at a festival, it’s unreal,” he says grinning. [So who are you going to stick around to watch?] “NAPALM DEATH obviously, but I really want to get in and see RAGING SPEEDHORN too. I’m going to get our van down the side of the stage when they start! They’re dead heavy: nu-metal vibe in some ways, but not in an old-school sense. Sludge metal elements in there too, maybe. I love listening to them, and I’ve not caught them live before.”
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