Having caught the lads in Conjurer twice already yet both times in a festival setting during the two previous editions of ArcTanGent in Bristol (UK), I knew I had to make the trip when I saw they were playing a small club show given how good their live performances are.
After spending a few hours in a bus and a train ride, I make it to the already packed venue located in Lyon's old town during local opener Aesmah's set.
As soon as I enter the crowded venue I am hit with flashbacks of my first, and only, previous visit at Le Farmer back in July 2019 to catch Frontierer live for the first time. Back then I attributed the venue's scorching heat to the ongoing heatwave but yeah no, turns out this venue exists in a parallel dimension shared with the hottest depths of hell no matter the season, nice.
Given the heat, the fact that the gig was sold out and knowing how rowdy things can get in a Conjurer pit, I braced myself for an intense show.
I still managed to catch a good few songs from Aesmah who, from what I heard at least, were playing some melodic, blackened death metal. Their performance didn't personally captivate me all that much and I found the vocals especially to be rather one-dimensional but I'll still go give their stuff a listen from the comfort of my headphones for good measure.
In come the riff lords to melt our faces off and snap our necks for the next hour with a balanced mix of material from their newest album "Pàthos" and their debut, critically acclaimed full-length "Mire".
"Choke" into "Hollow" is always such a treat live and scorchers like "Retch" and "Suffer Alone" never fail to get the crowd moving and it was great to get to hear "Cracks in the Pyre" live.
And unless I'm getting mixed up, I'm pretty sure they played "Of Flesh Weaker Than Ash" which is one of my personal underrated favorites from them.
Surprisingly, the crowd wasn't as rowdy as I expected but then again, the venue doesn't lend itself too well to intensive moshing and attempting a circle pit or anything similar in there would look fucking stupid, but I for one couldn't help but let my body be possessed by the sheer heaviness on display right before us and my neck is still sore from it days later. Yeah, getting older is shite craic isn't it.
Whether it is from a festival's mainstage or a tiny club show, Conjurer are able to muster the same crushing energy and sound gargantuan no matter the setting.
Definetly one of the most consistently great sounding and captivating live acts at the moment along the likes of The Ocean, Meshuggah, Car Bomb or even Between the Buried and Me. If you have the chance to catch them live, you'd be silly not to.
Now excuse me while I resume piecing myself back together in preparation for the next gig, whichever that may be.
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