Conan

Brudenell presents Conan at Brudenell Social Club.

Conan’s doom is singular, carved of granite. Yes, of course there have been changes since guitarist and vocalist Jon Davis founded the group in 2006, but the intention at the time toward heavy tonal extremity wrought with impressionist lyrics stripping ideas to the core, where sometimes the whole line is just one word – they have always called it “Caveman Battle Doom” – remains at the root of everything they have done since. Across five studio records in the decade from 2012-2022, Conan have set a standard by which much of heavy music is judged.

For every time you have heard about Conan’s music being like galloping steeds or frost-covered sharp-peaked mountains, imagery of largeness and violence, the truth is Conan are an exercise in frequency. It is the low resonance that shakes your chest, the depth of the bass, now handled by David Ryley (ex-Fudge Tunnel), the push of air from Johnny King’s kick drum, or the way the dark fuzz distortion of Davis’ guitar is offset by shouting vocals cutting through that sometimes punishing onslaught, rarely to offer comfort so much as add force to the crash, plod and pillage.

In 2024, Conan signed to Heavy Psych Sounds as a recognized name and an influential act of their generation in their home country of the UK and beyond. Their fifth LP, 2022’s Evidence of Immortality, brought a dark ambience to coincide with its outright attack. With experiments in darkwave and synth adding breadth to the stated root purpose of aural force, it is hard to guess where the next few years might take their sound. The better part of two decades later, their reliability remains unshakable.

If Evidence of Immortality introduced new shadows into Conan’s world, Violence Dimension revels in them. The album is no less crushing than its predecessors, but there is a deeper sense of atmosphere running through its core, a tension that hangs over the riffs like gathering storm clouds before the impact. It is the crawl of overdriven amplifiers pushed to their limits, the cavernous weight of David Ryley’s bass, the precision and force of Johnny King’s drums, and the way Jon Davis’ guitar seems to occupy every available space while his barked vocals emerge from the murk not to lead, but to intensify the threat. Where other bands mistake heaviness for volume alone, Violence Dimension understands that weight comes from anticipation, from the feeling that something vast and unstoppable is bearing down long before it finally arrives.