Review by Null
Whale blubber…it just feels good to say it.
People often refer to the band Conan as “crushing” and say the band evokes mental images of “bloodstained Viking battles.” However, I believe this is only true if one is being crushed by the softest and heaviest pillow ever imagined or watching giant Vikings battle in super-slow motion.
Sure, Conan’s album covers are filled with mystical barbarian warriors suited for battle in distant strange lands, and their lyrics follow suit, minimalist as they are. For instance, take a look at the lyrics to “Foehammer”:
“Miles drowned rivers. Seek eyeless dwarf. Ridden headless horse. Arrive reverse echo. Deliver skinless prize. Elven Lords Arise.”
That’s it. It takes the band 5 minutes to deliver this minimalist and impressionistic lyrical imagery. It’s what Conan does. Likewise, the vocals complement the music in the most brilliant way; the lyrics aren’t sung, as much as yelled across a great chasm. Even though the vocals are yelled, they are tempered, as if yelling into a pillow. The vocals sound like a voice you hear in your head that you can’t really understand. It sounds distant, but not “crushing.” The vocals are a mere garish to a meatier rock salad.
Which brings us to the music. Conan is h-e-a-v-y and overtly bass-y and definitely doomy. However, I never get the scene of Viking battles and epic bloodshed while listen to this band. I get something very different.
The prevailing mood I get while listening to Conan is geology, whales, and geologic time scales played out in time-lapse photography. Conan sound like molten lava and tectonic plates shifting. They remind that the earth is alive—not just in the biological realm, but the rocks and the water that make up this planet are “living” as well.
When I picked up their first album, Monnos, a few years ago, I slapped it in my boom box and listened to it while I went out to pick weeds in the yard. I ended up lying in the grass for half an hour watching the clouds pass by overhead. It was a beautiful experience, as the clouds danced in perfect choreography to this lava music. I did not have visions of “crushing battles,” but of the slow organic movement of the earth itself.
Conan’s music also reminds me of being underwater, like snorkeling on the edge of the continental shelf, weighed down by the mass of water above while peering into the great abyss of the darker, deeper, and unfathomable ocean itself. If a group of Humpback whales decided to form a band, they would sound like Conan. Whales have been here a long time and they would sing of their history—50 million years of it. This is what Conan will always be to me. The sound of whales, the ocean, and clouds, all played out on the geologic time scale. It is beautiful, doomy, and overwhelming, like being wrapped in the heaviest down comforter that embodies one’s own insignificance.
On occasion, Conan kicks it up. The tempo will pick up and that is typically when volcanos erupt in my mind, only to settle back down to slow moving molten rock.
I like Conan’s album covers and imagery. It’s cool. But this band will always be “earthy” to me. Their albums smell like rich, dank soil.
It may take a few minutes to acclimate to this band when one first pushes play, but my advice is to lay in the yard and stare at the clouds. Within a few minutes the brilliance of this band will all come together. They take us away from the rush of modern day life and place our existence in its proper place; the earth is 4 billion years old and we are a flash in that vast history. It is heavy, and overwhelming, and “crushing,” but in the most beautiful way.
I love Conan.
They are the sound track to Pangaea’s great journey.
This is how I see it.
Maybe I’m a freak.
Whale blubber.
