01. Unself
02. All Apart
03. There Is No Warmth
04. The Searing Glow
05. A Plea
06. Let Us Live
07. Hang Them In Your Head
08. Foreclosure
09. This World Is Not My Home

Conjurer are a band that have been difficult to categorize in the past: too savage and twisted musically to naturally place alongside typical post-metal bands, but too dynamic and expansive to be confined to sludge. Perhaps it is fitting that a musically non-conforming band such as this has released an album so lyrically inspired by the pursuit of identity within modern society.

I sang the praises of the band’s previous record, 2022’s Páthos, hoping that its increased dabblings with melodic elements alongside the ferocious foundation of their sound would further expand their reputation outside of the UK; Conjurer do still seem to be primarily a British phenomenon, although with recent tours across Europe and Australia, perhaps that may be gradually changing. Things have changed in the intervening years for guitarist/vocalist Dani Nightingale as well, following an autism diagnosis and revelations regarding their gender identity. This journey has had a knock-on effect on the band’s subject matter, as the misanthropy of Páthos is followed by a more explicitly socially conscious record in Unself.

This shift occurs alongside notable musical evolution undertaken by the group. Clean tonality and vocals were explored on Páthos, but both the extent and nature of those elements have been expanded on Unself. The record is bookended by the Americana-tinged title track and “This World Is Not My Home”, both of which feature an acoustic adaptation of the old gospel hymn “I Can’t Feel At Home In This World Anymore”, albeit each time morphing into gloomy distortion. In between are “A Plea”, a sullen acoustic quasi-interlude sampling a speech from activist Carla Antonelli, and “Let Us Live”, an anti-persecution plea that (as noted by Nightingale) draws from Midwest emo with its clean guitar opening, and has some of Conjurer’s most ‘anthemic’ sounds to date during a group vocal rally cry of a chorus against a post-rock tremolo instrumental backdrop.

With that all said, the record is still firmly recognizable as Conjurer. The devastating dissonant riffs, the bulldozing double bass onslaughts, the vicious growled/shrieked dual-vocal assault from Nightingale and Brady Deeprose, and the gloomy, subdued mid-song lulls of records past are all here in abundance, and after the mournful opening from “Unself” and soft keyboard introduction to “All Apart”, there is a gradual descent into darkness, before a bilious scream announces the first ‘classic’ Conjurer riff of the album. Even within the heavy songs, however, there is more exploration of melodic guitar and clean vocals, with a very effective part-sung chorus slotting seamlessly amidst the weight and venom otherwise heard during this track.

As mentioned up top, while the extent of the band’s heaviness is uncommon for post-metal, they do share elements of that style, with sparse lulls and gradual builds slotted into the second half of “All Apart”, and subsequently the likes of “The Searing Glow” and “Let Us Live”. Still, the bulk of the softer parts of Unself predominantly come in the more ‘dedicated’ at the ends and in the middle of the album; within the heavy songs, melodic touches usually arrive in tandem with the extremity rather than as standalone segments. “There Is No Warmth” is a fierce track with lots of typical Conjurer nastiness, but with quite a lot of melancholic tonality and clean singing alongside the roars, shrieks and sludge guitars. Even “Hang Them In Your Head”, the most intense and arguably strongest song on the record, has a snippet of booming cleans trading off with screams amongst the hench riffs and vicious surges of blasts.

While the most notable departures from ‘typical’ Conjurer have already been highlighted, one song is interesting for how it lingers somewhat between the two extremes. “Foreclosure” is the record’s longest song, and opens with a spacious, reverberating clean guitar motif that is eventually turned distorted for the first main riff, but even as it grows heavier, the pace does not follow suit. There’s a gloom to the slow, atmospheric verses, and a doomy heft to the grimmer yet similarly paced riffs that arrive in the second half of the song. “Foreclosure” is a bit of a spiritual successor to “Cracks In The Pyre” from Páthos musically, but probably even more than that track, it's the closest that they have got to a conventional post-metal song, and it works really well.

How well the other experiments on the album work may be somewhat up to personal taste; while I admire the lyrical inspiration and sentiments behind the softer tracks, I don’t find the soft/acoustic passages of the album to be overly compelling, at least compared with how well the band explored softer dynamics last time around with “All You Will Remember”. That said, Unself is a very respectable next step for Conjurer that still delivers all the stellar brutal venom that the band are so accomplished at.