Conjurer’s new album might be about sorrow, but the band have a bright future ahead of them. And it all started because Brady Deeprose wanted to skip Religious Education classes…

WORDS: MATT MILLS

PRESS

The Watts Memorial To Heroic Self-Sacrifice is a hidden gem of London’s dark tourism scene. Tucked away in Postman’s Park, a stone’s throw from St. Paul’s Cathedral, it’s a wall bearing 54 plaques recounting tragic yet selfless deaths. The epitaphs hail 62 individuals - men, women and children as young as 12 - who gave up their lives trying to save others.

This is where Hammer had arranged to meet Conjurer guitarist/vocalist Brady Deeprose to discuss Páthos, the East Midlands quartet’s forthcoming second album. It would have made a suitably bleak backdrop for unpicking a dense, multi-faceted and much-anticipated collection that Brady has previously, and somewhat mischievously, described as a) “objectively, the best album anyone’s ever made” and b) “just more miserable songs”.

However, they say God laughs when men make plans, and in typical British fashion, it’s absolutely pissing it down at the appointed hour of our rendezvous. So, instead, we head to the nearest branch of Pret A Manger. This ends up becoming just as apt a setting. For while Conjurer - completed by vocalist/guitarist Dan Nightingale, bassist Conor Marshall and drummer Jan Krause - are justly acknowledged as one of the most vital, pivotal acts on the UK metal scene right now, Brady, unlike the ‘faces’ of other heavily hyped rising metal acts, isn’t some unknowable, inaccessible enigma. He’s just a regular kid from Daventry, Northamptonshire, making the kind of music that he wants to hear. There’s no contrivance to Conjurer’s crushing, monolithic metal, and for many, that’s a key part of the band’s appeal.