{"id":109857,"date":"2025-10-31T01:54:10","date_gmt":"2025-10-31T01:54:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/109857\/"},"modified":"2025-10-31T01:54:10","modified_gmt":"2025-10-31T01:54:10","slug":"conjurer-unself-review-angry-metal-guy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/109857\/","title":{"rendered":"Conjurer – Unself Review | Angry Metal Guy"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"I\u2019m beginning to think Mire was a fluke. I\u2019m not saying that as a bad thing, but I remember listening to Conjurer\u2019s debut and thinking that it was a top post-metal album steeped in atmosphere and enigma, tied together with vicious vocals and vindictive weight. So then, I was immensely let down by follow-up P\u00e1thos because it seemed to shed substance for novelty<\/a>: if I\u2019m being honest, its stark dichotomy of heartwrenching melodies and kickass riffs felt inauthentic and shoehorned. Thus, I approached Unself carefully, hoping for something like Mire but tentatively expecting P\u00e1thos. What I got, however, was neither. You see, Mire was a fluke not in quality but in approach, because Unself proves that Conjurer prioritizes riff, weaponizing it for the very human tale of the deconstruction of self.<\/p>\n

The title track enters with what I would expect from an early 2010s metalcore band intro, the Americana cover of 1919 gospel song \u201cI Can\u2019t Feel At Home in this World Anymore\u201d morphing into a full-on dissodeath takedown via a barb of squealing dissonance. While this and the final song, \u201cThe World is Not My Home\u201d seem to tie up the album into a thematic deconstruction of religion, Unself is a bit more complex than that. It reflects the journey of vocalist\/guitarist Dani Nightingale through an autism diagnosis and discovery of them being non-binary. Similarly reflecting this complexity and remaining incredibly difficult to neatly categorize its sonic assault, Conjurer lays a foundation of post-metal\u2019s meandering rhythmic hulk with death metal intensity, sludge tonal abuse, and a sleek modern production built atop, with \u2013 in Unself \u2013 hints of black metal. It\u2019s not the second coming of Mire \u2013 it\u2019s Unself and undeniably on-brand and completely authentic \u2013 and that\u2019s perfectly okay for Conjurer.<\/p>\n

Unself by Conjurer<\/a><\/p>\n

Unself\u2019s structure shows Conjurer\u2019s devotion to natural growth, a welcome change from the shoehorned P\u00e1thos \u2013 largely because Nightingale\u2019s sonic struggles with self-discovery undergird the movements. The two halves of the album are divided into three tracks, bookended by the Huntsmen-influenced thematic motif of the aforesaid \u201cI Can\u2019t Feel at Home in This World\u201d morphed into ugly beatdowns and yearning sadness. The meat of the two suites fall into one of three categories: the relatively traditional post-metal waltzing of Amenra\u2019s heavier moments in sprawling weight (\u201cAll Apart,\u201d \u201cForeclosure\u201d), the yearning chord progressions and melodies recalling P\u00e1thos\u2019 emotive emphasis to a more effective degree (\u201cThere Is No Warmth,\u201d \u201cLet Us Live\u201d), or the outright assaults of blackened sludge and -core breakdowns (\u201cThe Searing Glow,\u201d \u201cHang Them in Your Head\u201d). As the album progresses, so does the intensity. The latter, the most vicious of the bunch, feel like they nearly boil over, nearly forsaking the post-metal attack for an obscure death metal attack a la Convulsing or Adversarial \u2013 making interlude \u201cA Plea\u201d truly the eye of the storm in its minimalist approach, distant vocal samples, and acoustic strumming.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The balance between novelty and songwriting remains an issue for Conjurer. Because of the trichotomy of its sounds, Unself offers different levels of quality. At first, the more traditional post-metal cuts (\u201cAll Apart,\u201d \u201cForeclosure\u201d) feel like absolute bangers, touched with darkness and harmony \u2013 but then you hear the other two approaches and they suddenly feel overly long and uneventful in comparison. Likewise, there are several tracks that could stand a good trimming, simply because many feature a singular abrupt tonal shift from melodic to dissonant in its last respective third (\u201cThere is No Warmth,\u201d \u201cLet Us Live\u201d). A more divisive take is that Conjurer\u2019s production is very modern and sleek, the down-tuned leads more akin to 2010s metalcore acts like The Plot in You or The Sorrow, an accessibility largely contradicting post-metal\u2019s historic opaqueness (Neurosis) and death metal\u2019s hostility (Bolt Thrower), so while I liked its more \u201cloud and ouchy\u201d tones, others may not be so persuaded.<\/p>\n

The novelty and the emotion are resolved in Unself, as Conjurer finally feels authentic and realized. No, Unself is not better than Mire, but it feels more genuine and human than P\u00e1thos, offering some of the act\u2019s most intense material to date while chronicling the dismantling of the self into something more authentic. Not only does Dani Nightingale embark on a journey of self-discovery, but Conjurer does too. I\u2019m just happy to be along for the ride.<\/p>\n

Rating: 3.0\/5.0
DR: 4 | Format Reviewed: 320 kb\/s mp3
Label: Nuclear Blast Records<\/a>
Websites: conjureruk.bandcamp.com<\/a> | conjureruk.com<\/a> | facebook.com\/conjureruk<\/a>
Releases Worldwide: October 24th, 2025<\/p>\n

\n\tGive in to Your Anger:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I\u2019m beginning to think Mire was a fluke. I\u2019m not saying that as a bad thing, but I…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":109858,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[836,9654,838,78815,842,844,27571,78816,78817,848,78818,156,78819,157,78820,111,139,9660,69,43839,9662,762,763,78821,78822,55825,78823,78824,78825],"class_list":["post-109857","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-836","tag-3-0","tag-adversarial","tag-amenra","tag-black-metal","tag-bolt-thrower","tag-british-metal","tag-conjurer","tag-convulsing","tag-death-metal","tag-dissonant-death-metal","tag-entertainment","tag-huntsmen","tag-music","tag-neurosis","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nuclear-blast-records","tag-nz","tag-oct25","tag-post-metal","tag-review","tag-reviews","tag-sludge-metal","tag-the-ongoing-concept","tag-the-plot-in-you","tag-the-sorrow","tag-unself","tag-veil-of-maya"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109857","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=109857"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109857\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/109858"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=109857"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=109857"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=109857"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}