Leave it to the younger bands to pave the way for how things could be. While loads of other genres are collaborating at every given opportunity, it seems to be taking rock and metal a little longer to embrace the concept.
Conjurer and Pijn, however, have come together to create ‘Curse These Metal Hands’ – neither a band nor a singular album, it sees the pair team up for a record of epic proportions.
“We were like, are we Pijn and Conjurer, or are we Curse These Metal Hands? I think we’ve settled with ‘we are Pijn and Conjurer playing Curse These Metal Hands’ …whatever that means!” explains Conjurer’s guitarist and vocalist Dan Nightingale.
“A lot of that is semantics,” Pijn drummer Nick Watmough agrees. “We weren’t sure how to package the thing; is it a new group, is it two groups playing together?”
Specifics aside, the two came together in something of a happenstance. “Pijn approached us and said there was meant to be this thing between [record labels] Holy Roar and Big Scary Monsters where it’s pitting band against each other, collaborations, and things like that,” Dan says.
“It was [only] meant to be for ArcTanGent last year. For whatever reason, Pijn ended up approaching us and just saying ‘Yeah, no one wants to do it with us, will you do it?” He continues, laughing. “We had no idea what we were getting ourselves in to. It was just like, ‘Yeah, let’s see how it goes. We can always get in a practice room, and if it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work’.”
Somehow culminating in a recorded album, from its formation to now, Curse These Metal Hands is an idea that’s spiralled out of control. Beginning with a “‘Hey do you maybe want to play a weird set at ArcTangGent?'” As Nick puts it, to “essentially forming a new, weird, pseudo band, writing and recording an album and having it come out.”
“And the fact that it’s not gone south, and it’s gone really well and exceeded everyone’s expectations is amazing.”
Elaborating further, Dan says: “People talk a lot about music bringing people together and all that stuff, and sometimes it can seem tacky when people say that, but it’s not. It’s cliche for a reason, and that’s very much what this project has been.
“It’s been us all going, what can we do that neither of our respective bands can get away with? In that process, we’ve just become really close and understanding that ‘oh you like this kind of stuff too’, we’ve all just mingled, and it’s become, I almost want to use the word ‘lovely’,” he chuckles.
Together they’ve created an album that, while only consisting of four tracks, is an impressive thirty-one minutes long. They’ve brought together the very best of Conjurer and their new-born brutality, and matched with Pijn and their explorative and expansive mindset. Bestowing these upon each other and the result is as exciting as it is complicated.
“[Pijn are] free-flowing – very post-metal, post-rock, long expansive soundscapes and stuff, and Conjurer are very ‘DUH DUH DUH DUH DUH!’, very bash you on the head sort of thing,” comments Dan.
Sound aside, the ways of each bands working couldn’t have been more opposite. Conjurer create songs step by step, picking apart each facet, curating notes to fit in the right spaces. “The four of us go away, we’ll write whatever bits we have, we’ll tab it up, and we’ll email each other,” Dan explains.
Pijn, meanwhile, are as you’d expect a band who craft soundscapes that feel like a journey around the musical spectrum. “I think for us it was quite natural, but I guess because the whole ethos of Pijn is supposed to be that. It’s more of a collective rather than a band,” Nick nods to the collaborative side.
“A lot of that is semantics because we’re still people playing rock music in a band setting, but we’ve had a lot more of a collective, revolving door policy. Some shows we’ll have four members and some we’ll have seven, so even the band itself, for us, is semi-collaborative and open for outside ideas.”
Indeed, the project they’ve come together to create is expansive. A combination of both bands strengths, but the most crucial element is what they’ve taken from each other – particularly for Dan and Conjurer.
“I know after doing all this stuff it’s made me look at Conjurer’s new material in a very different light,” he admits. “It’s made me think about how I want to approach that stuff in a different way. It’s all been very, very strange but ultimately very positive.”
He’s specifically noting the Pijn way of free-flow, collaborative thinking, something Nick jokingly assumes when he enquires as to what Dan mentioned. For him, and the other members of Pijn, it was a more resolute point.
“There was a point when we were recording the album, that this is the most fun thing we’ve ever done. We’ll probably all then go back to making our very, very serious punk faced metal bands and have no fun again. But it’s a weird kind of island of ‘this is really wholesome and joyous’ it was great.”
And with some sage words for any other alternative bands who might be in two minds about whether or not to slide into another’s DM’s, they have this to offer.
“It just goes to show that if you take a punt on these things; if bands do just hit each other up and be like, let’s give it a go,” Dan reasons. “If it’s bad, you don’t have to do it, and if it’s great then, wow! That’s why we’re surprised and how well this has gone. It’s turned out much better than we thought it would, and now we’ve recorded it, and we’re putting it out.”
And as for Nick’s point of view: “There’s only ever anything positive, and I think it’s weird that metal and rock are the only genres to not.”
“Pop songs – every other song has got ‘featuring somebody else’, hip-hop, every other genre is people coming together and collaborating, and it’s all the better for it. I don’t know why heavy music is stuck in its way of repeating the same thing over and over. It seems daft to me.”
Taken from the September issue of Upset. Pijn and Conjurer’s album ‘Curse These Metal Hands’ is out now.
