It's impressive to listen to an album like this and think that Justin Broadrick is behind it. Accustomed to much more extreme sounds (like Napalm Death, Godflesh, Techno Animal), here he completely leaves us bewildered and releases a work that is enchanting, nothing more and nothing less. An imaginary soundtrack for life glimpses. The hybridization between post-hardcore and post-rock, if not shoegaze, is almost perfect.
Imagine a crazy fusion between the walls of sound of Isis and Nine Inch Nails with the melancholic melody of Sigur Ros and Slowdive. Definitions that perhaps are momentary but help to account for the complexity of an album of exceptional power and (dreamlike) melodies (your choice if evocative of nightmares or sweet dreams), the latter mostly created by Justin's voice never as expressive as here. A voice suspended in the air like a warm sigh at sunset.
Conqueror gets "inside" you like a lazy summer afternoon. Already the first titular track is an example of how the heavy and noise mood of Broadrick's typical sounds has been transformed here through appropriate modifications (such as synth reprocessing) into something original and almost easy-listening (I know this word sounds almost like a blasphemy attached to the character, but there it is!). A sound however that seems to take you with it, not leave you anymore, enveloping you, swallowing you while he walks on tiptoe calmly forward. The often very slow dynamics and the completely saturated sound space contribute to generating this "new" sound. And here even the vocal lines trap you; as, for example, in the majestic "Weightless & Horizontal" where the ethereal and desperate repetition "try not to lose yourself" creates a sort of hypnotic ecstasy. Hear what Broadrick himself says:
"At first, it was the sound of resignation. Giving up, like, the battle's over, I just want to be cocooned in the womb. I was completely free to make this music I'd been trying to get out for a long time but hadn't really touched on, with pretty melodies and this huge sense of melancholy, sadness, and loss. That's probably the strongest emotion that I do still go through every day. It's the sound of isolation, to some extent, the beauty in that and the sadness of it as well. The bottom line is if it makes me feel like an emotional wreck. That's what I'm trying to do, things that really hit my heart."
In short, music that embraces depression impeccably and despite (or perhaps precisely because of this) a taxing and almost hopeless electric flow, despite the very few lights that clear up the tracks, it manages with its decaying sonic stabs to enter the listener's cerebral cortex overwhelmingly.
In "Medicine" a low and slow metal riff gives light to the darkness. The increasingly massive and suffocating sound disappears inside our mind. When reaching "Brighteyes", perhaps the most successful track of the entire work at least regarding the blend of extremism and melody, I am already completely in love with Jesu's new work. It closes with "Stanlow", a musical shot-sequence that truly seems to be the album's cover in music. Complexity and willingness to dare, this is 'Conqueror', a winning but not easily interpreted album. A transfiguration as suggested by track 3. A multifaceted and engaging wall of sound made of post-hardcore, post-rock, post-whatever you want.
Emphasizing that fortunately hearing is not just "listening" but also "perception", I would define 'Conqueror' as heart-rending and unique music where everything is in the right place. In fact, in a place even better than the right place we would imagine.
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