Conan are at the forefront of doom metal in the UK, and their stunning new album Blood Eagle has received universally excellent reviews in the metal press, including from Room Thirteen, where we gave it our hallowed 13 rating. Their live shows have a deserved reputation for being completely epic and crushing, and should not be missed. We met up with guitarist and vocalist Jon Davis at Glasgow Audio, in the midst of a UK tour. I conducted the interview with the assistance of my son Keiran, a massive and knowledgeable doom metal fan.
R13:The new album Blood Eagle seems to have widened out the sound you are going for. There are melody and rhythms you can definitely see an audience head banging to. Was that your intention, to go for that wider sound?
JD: Yes definitely. In writing the album we were touring quite a lot and we started to notice that certain songs got a better reaction. So we started to take those elements, songs like Satsumo and the heavier bits of Dying Giant and the end of Krull, and we thought we could get a higher ratio of those bits in a song. Rather than having it all really slow. Like Monnos is pretty much very slow all the way through in comparison. We thought, let's try and make it a bit more upbeat, try and make it a bit more in your face, make it more metal than doom, but still doom. We are really happy, the songs got us going in practice, and we thought these will work live for sure.
R13:The lyrics to the songs seem to have a style of their own. In Crown of Talons its no more than a few words in each line, but the economy of that and the bleak sentiment of the lines has real impact, which compliments the heaviness of the music. Is that what you were aiming for?
JD: Yeah definitely, that song in particular is the only one we have written that isn't about smashing someone with a sword (all laugh). We are not into writing about the real world at all, but I allowed myself with that one to talk a little about Jesus. I am not religious in any way, I just thought wouldn't it be cool to write about what it would be like if he came up now, and the image of this guy that no one gives a shit about. The rest of the album, the lyrics are similar to what we have done on the previous albums, so its all about the sword and sorcery movies I grew up with. I will write a song based upon a fight scene I had once in Skyrim...I will take snippets from a lot of things, like certain scenes in movies. Like in the film Conquest for example, he has got a weapon which is a bow and arrow, and he runs out of normal arrows, so he draws down power from the sun, and when he draws the bow back it glows blue, and fires off an arrow that splits off and kills everyone whose following him.
R13:Thats really evocative...
JD: When I saw that scene, I thought if I can make a song and base it upon that particular weapon and build around it, and add in other things, that might be cool. That's how I did it. That's the approach to most of the songs really. I don't like writing too many lyrics. I like to take a long sentence, obviously you describe a scene in sentence form normally in everyday conversation, but I will just pare that right down to a couple of words. Its make sense to my in my own head, but it keeps a lot of other people guessing, because its not really obvious, not really descriptive.
R13: In doom metal, lyrics are not always perceived as important. How much importance do you think your lyrics have in your music?
JD: I would say they are quite a strong focus. Indeed some of the songs are sparked by some words I have come up with. I don't always write the riff, and then write a song around it, and come up with the lyrics in the studio. I will be sitting there working and think of a phrase or a couple of things, and I will think that sounds cool. I might have a riff already recorded on the phone from a few days previous, and I will match it to that riff, and build a song around it. So the lyrics are very important. They are not as important as the music, and I think anyone would say that, apart from poets. For us the music is the key one, but the lyrics have to match up.
R13: When you guys first started out doom was not a very popular genre in the UK. What made you go for the very heavy doom sound, what were your major influences?
JD: There is a band called Slomatics from Ireland. When I was starting to get this band off the ground, I picked up a copy of their album Flooding the Weir, and that album is really slow. A really nice guitar tone, higher pitched lyrics which are low in the mix with a lot of reverb and echo. And I said that's what I am going to do. So at the beginning Conan was just a two piece....guitar and drums. It just grew from there. I wanted to play slow. I'm a bit better now but I wasn't a particularly good guitarist, and I just wanted to play stuff that I knew I could do well. So I just played drop tuning and slow riffs. We now mix in more mid-paced stuff, much more riffs, more single notes and lead guitar lines. It wasn't a conscious effort to revive anything, we didn't really have any connections to this scene at all. I have never been in a band that has been embraced by a group of people, so when this band came around, we released Horseback Battle Hammer, and all of sudden we were getting really good reviews off people, and that was just really cool, and it took us by surprise. Then all of sudden you are part of a scene, which I would never have expected and never intended to do anything with. But we are really happy, it's like we have found a place musically now, and there's a certain group of people which like our music. So its nice to have a purpose and an aim, and a home.
R13: What do you think sets you apart from other doom bands in the scene?
JD: I think our high pitched vocals are a difference. Our drumming is different too, because Paul's drumming style is probably the type of drumming style you wouldn't expect to find in this type of music at all. His background and musical preference is more like complicated death metal or technical metal, and he brings that and it carries the songs through. He can play a slow song, but with Paul's drumming it carries it through really well and makes it more interesting. We can make a song last 10 minutes, and it doesn't seem like a 10 minute song. I'm quite passionate about how my guitar sounds, and the gear that I use. Chris our bass player is an accomplished guitarist, so he is as passionate about all that stuff as me. He is also a very good bass player, so he has carried that passion for tone into his bass playing which has really helped. I think the key elements would be the drums and the high pitched vocals, and the fact that we don't sing about Satan or witches!
R13: The new album has a high quality production to it, how important was it to get the right engineer, the right producer? Is there anything you did particularly in the mixing, that you really wanted to shine on the new album?
JD: The first bit...I have got my own recording studio now, on the Wales/Cheshire border. I have a large house with land and extra buildings. One of those is an old coach house. When we moved in, in February last year, we converted that to a recording studio, called Sky Hammer studio. Chris Fielding, now our bass player, has produced everything we have ever done. It's really important for us to get the right guy, and it's him. He now works at Sky Hammer full time and bands big and small come to record there. It was really important to get Chris on it as he knows us, and he does a really good job with what we do. Did we do anything different, no. Apart from the location of it, we would have gone to Chris wherever he was. But this time we were fortunate enough, where I just step out the kitchen door and walk ten yards across the courtyard, and I just walk into the studio. We recorded for 9 or 10 days, rather than the 4 or 5 we normally do, because we were at home, at our own studios. We paid the going rate, we didn't get a freebie, so we paid the studio rate per day which felt like the right thing to do. The other lads don't have the opportunity to do that, why should we get it for free. Spending a bit more time in the studio was one of the main things, as it helped Chris to concentrate more on the production and the mixing. The more effort you put in, mixing the sound as you go along, the better result at the end.
R13: The reviews for the new album have been pretty amazing. I liked what Terrorizer said... "you'll still be humming those notes through bleeding gums three days later". What do make of the reviews so far?
JD: I think its cool and it's funny. Everyone seems to associate violence with our reviews, but we are the nicest people you can meet. Personally I have never had a fight and I don't expect to have one anytime soon. This sort of thing I think is quite funny, but the reviews have been really good. And we do read them, we are very interested in how we are received. It doesn't affect what we do, but it is nice to know when you are going to play a show that people respect us, because we are not young kids with lots of time. I am a dad and I have got a job, so do the lads, and it's like let's make it count. If people see us as being a worthwhile addition to the music scene that's really good for us, because when you are driving 4 hours to a show, you think, why wouldn't we want to do this ....where as if no one was interested in us after all these years, then it would probably feel like a bit of a waste of time. We spent a lot of time in the early stages just playing little shows in Liverpool and just practicing, and didn't have any expectations. With the release of Horseback Battle Hammer, and when it started getting reviews, it was clear we had a role to play. We thought okay lets give it a a go.
R13: The artwork on the album cover, tour posters and website is very evocative, is it all by Tony Roberts, and how did that relationship come about?
JD: Yes its all by him. He has done all of our work so far. He is a guy in America who lives in Oakland. For some reason Terrorizer think he used to play guitar in Discharge, but he never did. Every time they mention him, they put in brackets ex-Discharge. They are like a Stoke on Trent punk band, he's never been to Stoke! He's an artist that has worked with bands like Acid King, Electric Wizard, and he did the artwork for Electric Wizard's We Live. He's a great artist and we sought him out because when we first thought about an artist, our bass player at the time John McNulty said speak to him. So to be fair it was John that put me in contact with Tony. So I messaged Tony, gave him the ideas we had and sent him some demos, and he just sent an idea back, of a guy on a horse with death. Basically since then he has been a constant, and like the artwork for Horseback Battle Hammer influenced some of the music on Monnos, and the artwork for Monnos influenced his artwork for Blood Eagle. So things feed off each other, and we have a great working relationship and also on a personal level he is a really nice person.
R13: The way you described it, it's like he is a fourth member off the band.
JD: Yeah exactly and I have said that before, that's how it feels sometimes. We just call upon him whenever we need him and he is always there.
R13: I saw this comment on Facebook from someone at your Bournemouth gig "Pretty much everyone in Bournemouth is deaf now". Do you think your reputation for playing loud is deserved?
JD: Yeah! We do play loud. A lot of other bands play loud too. I don't know how we compare to other bands in volume. We have got a very large live rig,for bass we have got an 8 by 10 and a 2 by 15, and for guitar a 4 by 15 and a 6 by 12. That's like really loud.
R13: Wow!
JD: We have had those cabs custom made and they were dropped off with me on Wednesday, and we use loud valve amplifiers. Our whole gear is based around just delivering excellent tone at unreasonable volume. That's just how we do it. Valve amps sound better when they are driven hard, so that's why we do it.
R13: You headlined the Electric Amphetamine stage at the Damnation Festival last November, which seemed a very significant milestone for the band. How did that feel?
JD: It was good. It was cool. It was tricky in one way because of course Carcass were headlining the main stage at exactly the same time, so some people would come in, some would go out, but it's like that at festivals anyway. I guess your average Carcass fan probably wouldn't be too interested in us, and maybe the other way around. So there was a core group of people who stayed, and there was a bit of mixing, that's fine. It was cool, it was nice. I think it was Phil's last gig with us, although we didn't know he was leaving then. So it was significant in that way.
R13: On the festival thing. You have some great festival appearances lined up this year including Roadburn and Hellfest. Do you enjoy the experience of playing at festivals?
JD: Yeah definitely. It's a different vibe to playing regular shows, like tonight for example, which is just as exciting, but with a different vibe. Because at a festival you know the people there aren't there just to see you. So you don't feel under so much pressure, even though the crowds are bigger. It's almost like a showcase thing. Festivals are ace, you get looked after because it's slightly bigger, it's a bit more big time. Playing to bigger crowds is great, but these sort of gigs are the ones that every band should be playing. You see bands that just play festivals, that's such a shame really, because they are not connecting with their own fan base. Come and see us play at this festival....how much is it...it's a £100 for the weekend, or you can come and play in Glasgow and pay £5. We are very keen to be accessible outside the festival circuit as well.
R13: Where do you think you might take your music next?
JD: We are not really thinking about writing just now. We have quite a few shows coming up, a few tours. I think maybe at the end of the year we will start thinking about the next album. So as it stands right now we are not really thinking about it, is the honest way of saying it. I don't think we would stray too far from what we are doing. Hopefully we will evolve and get better, but I don't think you would listen to it and think, is this Conan? I think we have got a sound which is sort of ours, and we would like to make the most of it. Whether that means we change certain things, I am sure we will.
R13: We have really enjoyed the interview thank you so much.
JD: Thank you, you're welcome.
Conan represent the creative and cutting edge of doom metal, and as Jon Davis so clearly puts across in this interview, they genuinely care about their sound and their fans. A thoroughly nice guy too. Check them out, you won't be disappointed!