REVIEWED: Gaerea + Conjurer @ Islington Assembly Hall, London

A lot of water has passed under the proverbial bridge since genre-twisting melancholic metal luminaries Gaerea first came to our collective attention with 2022’s beguiling, pandemic-era breakthrough, ‘Mirage’. A mere couple of years later, cosy dive bar gigs rapidly progressed into grandiose, meticulously curated festival sets, with the band’s signature blend of blackly absorbing sonic extremity and ghoulishly balletic motion cementing their status as one of the most enthralling new fixtures of the underground. Fast forward four years to the band’s first UK headlining show following the release of metalcore-centric 2026 album ‘Loss’, and the resulting shift in sonic identity seems geared towards an entirely different kind of live experience.

But before this sizeable milestone of a live show unfolds here within the ornately stone-carved and crimson-carpeted confines of characterful London music venue Islington Assembly, doom-infused UK aggressors Conjurer open proceedings in impressively caustic and impassioned style. Via a bone-splintering combo of gargantuan, stoner-flavoured groove and concrete-weighted blasts that instantly hammer the senses into submission, these genre-twisting players meld monolithic heaviness and unfiltered evocative intensity to darkly compelling effect. Beneath a ghoulishly flickering profusion of shadows that see their ceaselessly lurching and writhing forms half-submerged in darkness, frontman Brady Deeprose hurls himself bodily into the bludgeoning throes of ‘Let Us Live’, his corrosive screams audibly crackling with incandescent rage. Crushing, unflinchingly raw and awash with intriguing rhythmic idiosyncrasies, this mammoth entity of a metal band makes for a compelling point of entry into tonight’s obsidian-hued festivities.

As a venue that’s long serviced us with a welcome reprieve from the soullessly homogenised O2s of the modern world, Islington Assembly appears, on first inspection, precisely the correct backdrop for a band renowned for their unflinchingly distinctive identity and remarkable knack for darkly immersive theatre. Yet, while the ornately carved and vaulted dimensions of this majestic historical landmark may lend themselves all too readily to marrow-chilling atmospherics and emotional catharsis, the first half of Gaerea’s set carries with it more than its share of altogether more palatable and, at times, overtly commercialised traits.

Across a set whose first half comprises a solidly unbroken focus on the band’s latest, stylistically divergent album, ‘Loss’, opening track ‘Luminary’ certainly encapsulates no small amount of the sultry, elegantly nuanced atmosphere and searing ferocity that makes Gaerea such a relentlessly magnetic entity. Yet, with this most recent studio offering comes increasing leanings toward the sort of anthemic, unmistakably Americanised metalcore trappings presently packing out stadiums across the continent and beyond. Headed up by a newly established frontman whose liberal injection of playful stage banter seems jarringly at odds with Gaerea’s formerly enigmatic, mystique-shrouded anonymity, and the whole delivery feels increasingly removed from the transcendental, eerily transporting energy that once made this band such a visually - and indeed atmospherically - riveting proposition.

That said, opening number ‘Luminary’ is still satisfyingly armed to the teeth with sound barrier-shattering bursts of unhinged, staccato-stricken battery, together with generous measures of distortion-steeped, luxuriantly unfurling riffery. Elsewhere, ‘Hellbound’s’ myriad, velvet-thick textures and tautly entangled bass work amass staggering scale before hurtling headlong into a carnage-filled frenzy of frantically bludgeoning blasts. Beyond the caterwauling clean vocals and Sleep Token-esque electronic trappings of grammatically problematic instrumental number ‘LBRNTH’, an ensuing smattering of material from the band’s earlier back catalogue feels like a fairly jarring change of pace.

And as ‘World Ablaze’s’ fluidly cascading lines of gleaming, melody-steeped riffage rain down amid densely pulverising stints of incendiary, white-hot battery, the band’s audible departure from layered and soul-baringly evocative musicianship in favour of increasingly arena-shaped accessibility here becomes keenly apparent. Together with 2022 standout ‘Laude’s’ epic interlacing of gargantuan, sleekly entwining guitar leads, delectably caustic tremolo and corrosive howls of unadulterated torment, it’s here that the indescribably haunting, anguished and ethereally transporting magic of Gaerea is by far most keenly pronounced. And while tonight’s visibly delighted crowd, together with a newly-confirmed slot at Bloodstock 2027, offers compelling evidence of a band on an upward commercial trajectory, it’s hard not to feel just a touch of nostalgia for the sumptuously absorbing darkness and biting viscerality of such decidedly bygone albums.