Album Review: Conan, Evidence of Immortality
Rest assured, Conan will put down their double-sided battle axe when you come and take it from their cold, dead hands, and that’s going to be hard to do since, as the first track of their fifth album, Evidence of Immortality, asserts, “A Cleaved Head No Longer Plots.” In continued association with Napalm Records, the boots-covered-in-red-mud UK three-piece of founding guitarist/vocalist Jon Davis, bassist/vocalist/producer Chris Fielding and drummer Johnny King return from the field with six tracks for a 50-minute double-LP that reassert the band’s sheer aural dominance.
It’s been a long, insane four years since the trio unveiled 2018’s Existential Void Guardian (review here), and Conan are past 15 years as a band but show little interest in settling into a comfortable veteran status. True, they know who they are as a band and Davis has driven a consistent vision for what he wants that to mean since before their landmark 2010 EP, Horseback Battle Hammer (discussed here; review here), with a sound based on unmatched riff largesse, minimalist lyrical narratives — often just words used as evocations; I’m actually a big proponent of Conan‘s lyrics as an undervalued aspect of their work, and not even just for the efficiency — turned in this case to a world where ideas like “Levitation Hoax” can be taken from real life and turned to the band’s bludgeoning purposes, Davis‘ shouts and Fielding‘s growls rising up from amid King‘s blasting drums and their own furious assault of groove in that single following the aforementioned 10-minute opener.
That lead song stakes its riff like a flag in the ground, not so much to question what’s real, but working to turn the confusion of our age into an aural metaphor of its own ridiculousness. Plus to destroy. These things Conan do with grim determination, cheeky revelry, and a craft recognizable from miles away. They are inimitable and influential in kind, and whether it’s the lumbering force of “A Cleaved Head No Longer Plots” or the build of intensity from “Levitation Hoax” into the galloping of “Ritual of Anonymity,” their pattern of holding to their central stylistic purpose while offering instances of forward progression holds plain across the span. “A Cleaved Head No Longer Plots” takes about two and a half minutes to settle into its rolling-over-your-skull central/verse riff, and by that point, Evidence of Immortality has already let the audience know it is in the hands of masters.
Circa 2022, Conan are nothing if not that, from Davis‘ riffs and shouts to Fielding‘s production and backing barks — the call and response in the first half of “Levitation Hoax” is a particular joy — to King matching his cymbal crashes to the guitar’s chug later in “A Cleaved Head No Longer Plots.” But there are instances of reach too. The band’s underlying influence of ’90s crunch metal and noise rock comes through, and the sheer amount of feedback on Evidence of Immortality isn’t necessarily anything new from them, but it is prevalent. After the shove shove shove that culminates in “Ritual of Anonymity,” side B brings “Equilibrium of Mankind” and “Righteous Alliance,” both eight-minute crushers that reinforce the central message of Conan‘s return after the longest break between albums of their career (the extenuating circumstances go without saying): if you counted them out, those’ll be your limbs on the floor. You’ll probably want help picking them back up for reattachment.
The construction of Evidence of Immortality is further proof of Conan‘s intention. The three songs on the first side clearly fit together toward a united purpose. Same is true of the lurching, deathly shout-along in “Equilibrium of Mankind” and its companion, the we-took-a-doom-riff-and-made-it-kill “Righteous Alliance,” which drops out to feedback and cymbal wash at about 5:20 into its total 8:35 to dedicate the remainder of its time to a glorious, marching celebration of slog. Slog worship. And a fitting lead-in for 14-minute instrumental closer “Grief Sequence,” which is easily, hands-down the most atmospheric work Conan have ever done, unfolding a five-minute mire before lumbering through the next five minutes until a John Carpenter-style keyboard line — it’s actually former bassist David Perry (now of Dead Void in Denmark) — picking up from the ambient organ-style sounds that have run alongside the guitar, bass and drums to that point.
If you’re looking for firsts on a band’s fifth record, that’s a first. Though Davis has delved into synthesized sounds in other projects, working that into Conan both feels and is new. And if you’re listening digitally — as likely most will — it is a hypnotic finish to a collection that has found Conan playing to what have always been the band’s strengths while branching outward from there. On vinyl, it’s somewhat different, since the limitations of the format mean “Grief Sequence” appears standalone on side C with an etching on side D. This leaves one to wonder how many will, having heard and processed “Grief Sequence” as it is in relation to the rest of what’s come before it, swap out an entire LP just for that rather than simply go back to “A Cleaved Head No Longer Plots” after “Righteous Alliance.” Depends on the listener, obviously, and with digital as the main means by which Evidence of Immortality will be consumed — or through which it will consume — it’s a non-issue. Still, vinyl being what it is leaves “Grief Sequence” a bit out in the cold.
Given the song’s experimental feel, that’s all the more something to watch out for as a listener, because its further establishing of Conan as a forward-thinking veteran act isn’t to be discounted. I have to think that if they didn’t want it to be there, it wouldn’t be. That is, if Evidence of Immortality ended after “Righteous Alliance,” they could’ve easily written a shorter interlude or something like that to fill it out past a 36-minute runtime. “Grief Sequence,” on practical and aesthetic terms, is much more than that. More than a decade and a half on from Davis‘ starting the band, Conan are willing to take risks as well as to sound the familiar war horns of devastating tonal heft, higher-in-the-throat/lower-in-the-gut shouted vocals, and a general aura of violent threat. If that isn’t commendable, nothing is.
I guess this is where I’m supposed to wrap up by calling them immortal or making some clever-but-still-cliché remark about their work living forever. Well fuck that. Everything fucking dies. Everything decays. Everything ends. Evidence of Immortality isn’t asserting otherwise so much as pointing out the folly of believing the plainly stupid. In other words, watch your fucking head.
