INTERVIEW: CONJURER IN CONVERSATION WITH BRADY DEEPROSE
Interview by Cecilia Pattison-Levi
The new album ‘Unself’ by UK band Conjurer is a journey into the disciplined craft of heavy metal and making an album as a band. The songs and the technical musicality of this record are the real deal as it draws in the collective and disciplined experience of making music. It is the essence of ‘Unself’.
Conjurer is a British ‘sludge’ metal band from Rugby in Northern England that formed in 2014. The band is comprised of Brady Deeprose (guitar/vocals), Dan Nightingale (guitar/vocals), Conor Marshall (bass) and Noah See (drums), and together they blend elements of post-metal, sludge, doom, black metal, death metal, and hardcore into their music.
“Sludge?” exclaimed Brady Deeprose. “It sounds like a term Danny, and I came up with when we were starting the band. As kids we had grown up on metalcore. But as we got into music and a little older, we got into doom, death metal, and bands like Crowbar, Eyehategod and Acid Bath. The touch points I guess are stoner metal and bands that have that southern Americana approach with the aggressive, viscid and opaque sounds. Conjurer has taken those influences and twisted it.”
The aggression of the heavy metal sound is there in Conjurer’s new album ‘Unself’ but nine songs breathe in the most fascinating way. The touch points of Americana are referenced in ‘Unself’ but it’s the unusual use of folk music combined with electronics, samples of a Spanish speech, the use of other voices, and the most extraordinary use of clean vocals, and most importantly, the underscoring of every track with the acoustic guitar in the mix.
“Yes. The acoustic guitar is most certainly there on the album. It has been a focal point on all our albums,” stated Brady Deeprose. “We use the acoustic guitar as a form of layering. It gives the songs texture and structure. It becomes the core of the sound underneath the heavy instrumentation. It gives the songs that light and shade and allows parts of the music to shine”.
The core of this album does shine in its ability to throw musical light and shade onto the songs. “You know, you could be the “heaviest band in the world” but it gives you nowhere to go musically,” explained Brady Deeprose. “The sonic landscape just becomes about being heavy. You need to have that contrast. That is the craft in making heavy metal music – the pull and push – of different sounds”. The album ‘Unself’ puts that idea and delivers it upfront in the first song, and title track, where the folk strumming of the acoustic guitar and vocals descend into a climax of cacophonous electronic whine, heavy metal angst, and a guttural roar.
The album’s first four songs take the listener on an aural journey that plays with form, structure, and genre. ‘All Apart’ has an alternative rock feel with some beautiful clean vocals before the deathcore metal commences with a full-on assault. ‘There Is No Warmth’ and ‘The Searing Glow’ get straight into the heavy metal guitar riffs and vocal fry singing right from the start, and blend in delicate elements like haunting vocals and melodies. Before the album rests with an interlude called ‘A Plea’ that has a delicate acoustic melody with a soft drum kick and samples Carla Antonelli's speech in Spanish. It is a powerful and brave track. Its placement in the middle of the album, if your streaming, and at the end of the first side if you a vinyl fan, is so well thought through in the structure of ‘Unself’.
“We are trying to keep songs and sounds exciting in our music,” said Brady Deeprose. “Song to song there should be moments and movement. Song craft in general, but in metal, needs to be kinetic. It is a brutal process really. You build the song and then you chip away at it until it is ready. We never force the process, but many ideas and sounds are cut away. And, then we have the song in its finished form”.
The second half of the album starts with ‘Let Us Live’, the first single, where the prominence of the rock acoustic guitar and electric guitar melody starts before a dominant bassline commences and anchors the big drum blast, and death metal vocals create an aggressive and emotional tone. This song takes all the other tracks and smashes them together into a mix of melodic singing styles and ascending and descending scales that fight each other in the verses and chorus. ‘Hang Them In Your Head’ and ‘Foreclosure’ bring back the heavy sounds with electric guitar riffs, sombre drums, and hard vocals. ‘Unself’ closes with ‘This World Is Not My Home’ and that recurring meme with more acoustic guitar and those lovely clean vocals, return.
“We are really proud of this album and how we made it together,” explained Brady Deeprose. “It was a collective effort with the metal community – our band, our friends and other creative people. It was a group effort. We have never leaned into that community aspect before, and it has been a great, real, experience. We understand our limitations and want to take our music and ideas further, and this process allowed us to bounce ideas off each other. We are proud of the album and excited for people to hear it”.
Conjurer has delivered a tight and disciplined album in ‘Unself’ which really is about the collective. The album is well conceived and delivered with contrast and juxtaposition of musical ideas at its core. Life is not black and white – it plays in the shades of musical genres of grey. “We want to craft an album that takes the listener on a journey,” stated Brady Deeprose. “It’s an album made by a group of friends. It’s about making a different musical statement than we have made before. I am “Capital A” proud of this work as something we have all brought it together – it’s bigger than just ourselves – so it transcends us. We are excited about it and cannot wait to tour it”.
Conjurer is about to take off on a huge European and UK headline tour in October and November 2025 if you (dear reader) are over there. But the exciting news for Australian fans is that Conjurer are going to be touring here in 2026. “Yes. The plan is to get over to the US and to get back to Australia as soon as possible,” said Brady Deeprose. “We played Dark Mofo in Tasmania, and it was an amazing experience. We had a great time in Australia and are very keen to come back”.
The delivery of this album live will be a unique experience and well worth catching. In ‘Unself’, Conjurer have delivered an album that is more than the sum of its parts: it has real depth and emotion. It also demonstrates why Conjurer is one of Britain's most exciting and important contributors to heavy music.
Conjurer’s new album, ‘Unself’ is released on 24 October 2025 on Nuclear Blast Records.
