Conan – Violence Dimension
Heavy Psych Sounds – 2025
Metal, Doom, Sludge
Rated: ****
At Stoner HiVe we try to go out of our way to mention those smaller bands, the ones starting out and the ones that are still doing all that ground work. And even though we do write about the big names often enough, we do realize we should write about them some more. Cause whenever the Stoner HiVe Top 20 Countdown of that year rolls around and all of your votes start to roll in, those are the ones that are always on the list. Take Conan. Number 19 on the Countdown of 2022 and Number 12 back in 2018. The three other albums probably should have made it as well and I’m suspecting the new Violence Dimension will make it this year. So, why not write a few words about it right now? Cause well, there’s enough violence in our dimension, right now. And that is the idea behind the new Conan album. The three from Liverpool, UK are traveling through the various landscapes filled with aggression, brutality and carnage. Delivering their own takes on all the different themes with furious riffs and bass work that burns it all down to a cinder. Demolishing drums pound away at the ashes as the piercing cries from vocalist, guitarist and founder Jon Davis enflames it all even more. The three are still founder Jon Davis, drummer Johnny King, present since 2017 and on bass since 2023 David Ryley formerly of Ungraven and Fudge Tunnel. And Ryley’s first release makes him sound even more colossal then on his other work and makes the Conan sound have this desperate edge. Turning the violence and aggression into something forlorn and twisted. And there’s a lot of the Conan sound present, doom, sludge, all metal and all the time. Although there is that forty five second long thrashy and punk battering ram called Warpsword. It not only batters down the door, but it also destroys all the furniture inside. And your own insides will get destroyed by that eight track Vortexxion. After having been beaten into submission by the wonderful ten minute long doom trod Ocean Of Boiling Skin, Vortexxion closes the album off with Conan drone. A barbaric take on drone, taking the feedback loop into a noisy reality filled with bleeding ears and melting innards. It’s a violent ending to a wonderful album…
(Written by JK)
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