New from Conan!
Since their last album, Jon Davis (guitar/vocals, Ungraven, DOS), and Johnny King (drums, Dread Sovereign, Krawwl, Malthusian) have recruited bassist David Ryley (ex-Fudge Tunnel, ex-Ungraven) and it’s with him that they sign to Heavy Psych Sounds Records to release their sixth album, Violence Dimension.
Foeman’s Flesh opens with a slow but abrasive sound that becomes even heavier when bass and drums come into play, then clearly oppressive when Jon‘s howls appear in the background. The rhythm evolves in more or less regular patterns, letting the dissonant flow provoke outbursts of violence or, on the contrary, crush us to the ground, before the final feedback leads us to Desolation Hexx and its fat but catchy riffs, which take over with a rather similar approach. Here again, the trio’s heavy sound is complemented by a few strident harmonics, before accelerating one last time to make way for Total Bicep, which takes advantage of the more vigorous roots to display aggression and jerky patterns, but also very slow passages where we feel crushed by this raw power, but also tortured by the chaotic leads before the sound gradually disappears. This is followed by the eponymous track Violence Dimension, which lets us breathe a little in its opening moments, but quickly becomes disturbing and progresses slowly towards thicker distortion. The track remains almost exclusively instrumental, reserving a few screams for an even more massive finale before Frozen Edges of the Wound takes its place and distills its own hoarse aural grease with a few sharper bursts, but the track is relatively short, as is Warpsword, which could almost pass for Grind, thanks as much to its speed as its duration. Ocean of Boiling Skin comes next, with its motivating march, but also its dark tones that interrupt the progression before leaving us to endure the riffs like a burden that becomes increasingly suffocating, until it comes to an end.
Some versions of the album also contain an eighth track, Vortexxion, which initially floods us with dissonance and feedback in a rather noisy and strange approach.
We take the same and it resumes with Conan! Like a well-oiled machine, the band delivers a batch of thick haunting riffs with the compositions of Violence Dimension, which I’m already looking forward to seeing live!
85/100