Though sentience cannot negate overlord rule by time and fated death Liverpool, England-based sludge/doom metal trio CONAN posit violence as a potential tool which all human beings carry within, an everyday reality of basal human interaction which affects change more often than any alternative. For this seventh full-length album their portal to survival, ‘Violence Dimension‘, naturally pours of hairier volatility while also taking deeper passes at their experimental side. In leaning into a deeper stroke of mayhem the band’s work compounds its core traits, speaking to a pulverizing legacy of sonic excess as a pillar of primitive doom.

Conan formed by way of guitarist/vocalist Jon Davis circa 2006 with the help of drummer Ritchie Grundy, jamming in pursuit of heavier minimalist doom via a duo line-up. They’d taken a few years to figure out working line-up, took a pause for a year, and reactivated around 2009. Their earliest efforts were immediately well-received per a sound/style they’d eventually describe as “caveman battle doom”, a mammoth sound inspired by the tonal excesses of drone/doom, the brutish sledge of sludge metal, and the fuzz-crushed standard set by the best of stoner/doom in the 2000’s. Their approach was charred down to minimalist efficacy in by way of maximal sound design, working with folks like James Plotkin and (eventual) longtime member Chris Fielding to create one of the more over-the-top approaches to sludge/doom metal at the time. Their first album ‘Horseback Battle Hammer‘ (2010) is worth taking in as a point of entry, an extreme sound even today.

Rather than recap the band’s entire discography a second time my review of their previous release (‘Evidence of Immortality‘, 2022) goes into enough depth relaying an existence centered around imposing guitar tones and shout-out, embattled sludgecraft. As a fan since the release of ‘Monnos‘ (2010) I’d appreciated what the addition of drummer John King (Malthusian, ex-Altar of Plagues) brought beyond 2017 in terms of variety as well as Davis‘ increasing focus on experimentation/droning jams and use of synth as part of that records fleshy endurance beyond ‘Existential Void Guardian‘ (2018). Most of what we find on this brand new, lux ~hourlong double LP leans into the barrage n’ droning hurl Conan‘d brought on that sixth LP but does it bigger and for longer stretches of time. Otherwise the big deal here in terms of the band’s sound is probably the addition of David Ryley (ex-Fudge Tunnel) bassist, carrying a huge tone to suit the host of ~10 minute kill-streaking lunges within. The only difference in this newly filled chair beyond Fielding is that the fellow doesn’t provide backing/additional vocals on record, at least as far as I can tell.

Shouting and hammering down, as they are prone to do, Conan introduce themselves with a club of a riff via opener “Foeman’s Flesh”, hailing this first accost from their familiar underwater dimensioned post. If you were big on how the band’d opened ‘Blood Eagle‘ (as well as the previous LP) you get an equally big step into the fray and a solid doom metal riff girding their slow-motion violence. Smaller gestures, such as the guitar fill around ~5:50 minutes in or the (backgrounded) howling feedback ripped lead near the end of the song, help to keep the rhythmic interest flowing beyond the brutal doom applied though this song is the first of many to fixate on punishing strikes, conveying an unrepentant feeling through repetition. Key single “Desolation Hexx” cuts that level of impact back to only the most essential chunking rhythmic gnarl in half the time. The part that’d stood out to me most is the riff change around ~4:10 as it feels like a transition pulled directly from, I dunno, Side A of Sepultura‘s ‘Roots‘ the way it gears up to a gallop.

The “meat” of the record and the true enduring clash on offer occurs somewhere within the colonnade presented between “Total Bicep” and the slow-burning title track “Violence Dimension”, the entire contents of Side B. Each of these ~9 minute songs find a groovier step, a slightly different affect which brings some serious variety to the whole deal. “Total Bicep” doesn’t quite reach the levels of brain rippling activity you’ll get from a records like High on Fire‘s ‘Cometh the Storm‘ but lands hits that’re just as heavy on the trudge and blaze through. Granted the title track is entirely different, a tentative doom metal song which leaves the ear climbing its smokey mountain until the very last minute where they barge through, leaving “Frozen Edges of the Wound” to pick up where it’d left off. This trio of songs leaves us with the weight of the record, its rhythmic bluntness in full display and from that point we get a breather, a sludged-out nuke, and a droning wall of radiation beyond.

There are few things I enjoy more than hearing a band like Conan take their long-winded, slow-moving behemoth sound and apply it to a grinding ~1 minute song (re: “Paincantation” on ‘Existential Void Guardian‘) and they’ve brought back some of that with the chop through “Warpsword” here. Give me like a 7″ worth of those type of songs already. But hey, naturally the big event here is the closer “Ocean of Boiling Skin”, the glue that affixes the wheel in place and a major source of carnage on the way out. Simple as a moment like the bass and noise drifting refrain (beyond ~4:07 minutes in) of this song is it’d end up being one of my favorite bits of the album, horror noise which takes me back to a darker more doom-oriented exaggeration of sludge tones per the 2000’s. It not only breaks up the drone of the song on the way out but prefaces the return of one of the meanest riffs on the album, deceptively simple yet effective movements which accumulate nearby the endpoint.

If you’d gotten the full 2XLP version of ‘Violence Dimension‘ Side D contains bonus track “Vortexxion” a 12 minute drone which I figure longtime Conan fans should appreciate, again you should reel back to ‘Horseback…‘ and soak up key context as I’d suggested earlier. It isn’t the most necessary or compelling moment for my own taste but it doesn’t necessarily hurt the experience either. From what I can tell there is also a single LP version of the album that doesn’t include the song as another option. I’d kind of grown to appreciate this type of experimentation on the previous album but I’d preferred it as an option rather than a major chunk of the experience. No harm done leaving a groaning pile of feedback and distortion beyond the absolute barrage of this album otherwise though I was fine with “Ocean of Boiling Skin” as an endpoint all the same.

The moment to moment action, the bloodied riffcraft of ‘Violence Dimension‘ per its clobbering simplicity speaks to a classic Conan sound achieved by both attrition and tact over the years, all of which is readily familiar on approach. There are no major surprises in terms of sound design here, they’ve nailed different textures and guitar tones for each album along the way and it suits a heavier tanking cull just as well as a slow-burning crawl. The use of guitar noise, feedback, choppier 90’s grooves, and different vocal layers are novel additions to each song here which do a lot to enhance their replay value though rarely result in an outright catchy moment or breakout surge of energy, songs which will most likely reward a patient and focused mind rather than a scatterbrained seeker of convolution. That said it does feel like Conan are slowly evolving album-over-album, even within their most heated slabbed-up violence they’re reaching for something differently angled which still entertains the shit out of me as a longtime fan. A high recommendation.

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