Conjurer: The Power Of Páthos

If you’ve found yourself in one of those ‘best metal albums of recent years’ conversations lately, chances are someone will have at least mentioned Mire by CONJURER. The debut full-length from the UK four-piece – released back in 2018 – is, for many, nothing short of a modern metal masterpiece. Offering a little something for just about every fan of heavy music, it set them on a trajectory that’s turned them into one of the best loved bands in the UK today, making a staggering live name for themselves while also pausing briefly to release a similarly excellent collaborative record with PIJN back in 2019.

All this is to say that when guitarist/vocalist Dan Nightingale tells us the only criteria the band had for Mire‘s long-awaited follow-up was “for God’s sake, make it better than the first one”, that’s absolutely no mean feat at all. Obviously, ‘better’ is a subjective term, but one thing that is for certain is that CONJURER haven’t done what they could easily have been forgiven for doing and made ‘Mire Part II‘. Instead, in their new album Páthos, they’ve produced something arguably far more interesting – a record that sees the band push the envelope in a myriad of ways, while still being clearly recognisable as the CONJURER we’ve all come to know and love.

“That’s kind of the point,” emphasises bassist Conor Marshall. “All we knew is that we didn’t want to do ‘Mire Part II‘, but we did want to take what we’d done on that and then through new influences and new ideas take that further, and it was just kind of then discovering what that was. In terms of where we go from that now. We still have no idea, but the point is to deliberately not do anything that we’ve done before.”

Perhaps Marshall’s getting a little ahead of himself there – we’re chatting nearly a full month before Páthos has even seen the light of day – but it is proof if nothing else of a band who refuse to produce anything other than their very best at every turn. “We always say we’re writing for the four of us and what we think is good,” explains Marshall. “If other people like it, wicked, if not, then it’s okay to be wrong!” He laughs.

Indeed, spirits remain high – if you’ll excuse the pun – throughout the course of our conversation, with both Marshall and Nightingale ribbing each other, and their absent bandmates, at every chance they get. It’s refreshing for sure, speaking to a band who make music as heavy and oppressive as this, but who also clearly aren’t taking themselves too seriously. “I still think we’re just kind of four idiots,” grins Nightingale. “We have a joke within the band where we ask each other ‘are we like a real band?’ because it still doesn’t really feel like it.”

“I think you’ve got to have fun if you’re playing music full stop,” he adds later. “But especially music that’s as bleak and I don’t know if uncomfortable is the right term, but you know, it ain’t CARDI B! We’ve got to be able to have a laugh. And as well, it’s like why would you not want to have fun? I hate all these bands that are super po-faced. If they’re all jolly and brilliant behind the scenes then that’s kind of cool that they can be all bleak and miserable and then they just have a laugh, but we just find it kind of impossible to not be morons all the time.”

Maybe so, but it’s also clear that CONJURER can flip their serious switches when they need to. Páthos is as good a proof of that as anything – a work of clear and considerable craft, with a weight both in its music and its themes of loss, fear, anxiety and the afterlife. Crucially, while most of the songs and riffs may start in Nightingale’s head, the end result is a product of intense and often painstaking collaboration.

“The thing I am quite proud of is that with a lot of bands it feels like they kind of clamber over one another to have certain roles and have their fingers in every aspect of the band, but with us it’s very much everyone has their bit,” offers Nightingale. “Everyone has the thing that they’re really good at. So for instance with [guitarist/vocalist] Brady [Deeprose] and Conor, they still write and stuff, but more than anything if me and [drummer] Jan [Krause] are sat slaving over a song and we’re just totally burnt out from it, having those guys fine tune things and be the decorations on the cake so to speak is super helpful. We never know what we’re doing, we just know when what we’re doing sounds good.”

“That’s kind of where a lot of the diversity within it comes from,” adds Marshall. “We will just write whatever and that’s how you end up with a seven-minute song going into a two-minute song or a completely different style. It is just because at whatever time we were writing, that’s what we wanted to write and that’s how the song ended up. The songs end up at seven minutes because we think everything that’s in there is needed. We don’t write songs specifically to be seven minutes but we’re also not fussed about being like ‘this song can’t be longer than five minutes’ or anything like that. We write whatever we want to write and then the tricky bit comes when we’ll just argue and argue over the minutiae and the decoration of it.”

A challenging process then, but as both Nightingale and Marshall agree, absolutely worth it when the results are as good as they are on Páthos. We’re pretty sure this latest effort will only add to the band’s frankly ridiculous momentum, but, as you might expect, neither of them are willing to get their crystal balls out just yet. “We’re just gonna keep following our noses,” clarifies Marshall. “Make the decisions we think are best for us at any given time with the aim that we want the band to continue to grow and stuff so hopefully we can go on tour and who knows maybe we’ll be able to start to take a bit of money from it. It’s not about the money but we wanna keep doing this and keep enjoying it first and foremost.”

“Especially after these last two incredibly unpredictable years, putting any sort of plan on anything like that is just kind of futile,” adds Nightingale. “You never know what’s gonna happen. You never know what music you’re gonna be into in two years time and how that’s gonna influence your music. This is gonna sound equally as wanky as the question, but we do just kind of want to live every moment as it comes to us.”

With that last point prompting a resounding “Fuck you Dan!” from Marshall, we decide it’s best to leave things there. In Páthos, CONJURER have on their hands a record that comfortably lives up to some truly stacked expectations, and whether they’re idiots, morons, or just four normal guys, there aren’t many who do it quite like them.

Páthos is out now via Nuclear Blast Records.

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