If there’s one thing the metal community loves, it’s hyperbole. There are thousands of metal records that come out a year, and they are all described with superlatives.

For instance, let’s look at Conjurer, who the internet has decided to call “The Saviors of British Metal.” No matter how hard you roll your eyes at that, Conjurer is rolling theirs harder. They’ve said a few times that they don’t consider themselves to be doing anything all that revolutionary.

Still, listening to Pathós, you might think that the internet hyperbolists are on to something.

This record was first recommended to me by my podcast cohost Jesse, who fell for it hard last year. And despite the description ticking all my boxes, I didn’t give it an earnest listen until last week. But once I did, its claws were impossible to escape.

As fractured as the metal scene is, it’s hard to imagine that this record could exist. While its musical center is probably best pinned as sludge or post metal, it wanders from that center an awful lot. Spikes of black metal erupt like skin-melting geysers. Deathcore breakdowns and beatdowns shatter the musical landscape like a sudden earthquake. Post rocky guitar runs soar like the calm before a hurricane. I usually scoff at the paragraph-long subgenre fusions assigned to metal bands, but I feel like it might be useful in this case (blackened progressive death sludgecore?)

Where many acts implement this sort of genre cross-pollination as an end unto itself, Conjurer uses them as mile markers along one of the most compelling musical journeys I’ve heard in a long time. The one-two punch of “All You Will Remember” and “Basilisk” is maybe the best example on the record, traveling from clean guitar post rock to black metal blast beats to a deathcore breakdown and back again a few times in the combined thirteen-minute runtime. “Suffer Alone” sheds every bit of patience the rest of the songs has and burns all the same energy in a two-and-a-half minute metalcore track. From the ashes of that explosion, “In Your Wake” rides a doom riff that would make Candlemass weep tears of joy.

This is the sort of record that really requires a close, intentional listen. As much time as I’ve already given it, I still don’t feel like I’ve given it the attention it deserves. I need to set aside a time with the (gorgeously packaged) lyric sheet, turn my phone off, and let it consume me. It is quickly becoming one of my favorite metal records of the last few years.