This isn’t to paint Conjurer as a band of newbies who stumbled upon some genius formula. The members of the Rugby-based quartet have all been part of different local bands in the past, and have been metalheads throughout the genre’s recent growth spurts. But more than anything, those previous forays into whatever niche scene was most popular at the time taught them what they didn’t want to do.
“The old bands I was in, we really were trying to be in a scene,” says Dan. “It was shit, but it was a prevalent metalcore scene, featuring bands that were made on the super pristine razor-sharp metalcore. And because we followed that so much, we just sounded like even more rubbish versions of that. So when our bands split up, and all those bands split up, me and Brady sat there looking around thinking, ‘There’s nothing here. What do we do?’ It wasn’t a scary thing -- we weren’t thinking, ‘There’s no trend to follow, there’s no scene to wave the flag for,’ it was like, ‘Well, we can just...do what we want now!’”
According to Dan, the band’s sense of isolation in Rugby provided a great creative drive. Without a thriving local scene or strong network of venues, the band was cut off from what they were supposed to be playing, and could instead focus on what inspired them.