Gaerea
Special Guests: Conjurer
Venue: The Fleece, Bristol.
Date: 16th September 2026
Review: Pete Wall
Conjurer
Conjurer have long since earned their place among the UK’s most formidable heavy bands, but there’s something particularly thrilling about seeing them in a room the size of The Fleece, which caps out at just past 400. This is a band whose sound is purpose-built to flatten much bigger spaces, but tonight every detail lands with ridiculous levels of muscularity and savage intent. The drum tone is immaculate, the low end is genuinely sublime, and the bass sits underneath everything like a gnarled anchor, giving the whole thing so much weight that it could knock you off your feet. The newer Unself material sounds absolutely massive, but so do the older tunes, with the four-piece moving between crushing sludge, meticulously arranged post-metal dynamics and outright violence with a precision that lifts hearts towards heaven. This is in no way hyperbole; Conjurer absolutely kill.
There’s not much crowd interaction across the slightly abrupt 45 minutes, but when you sound like this, you are duty bound to let the people have both barrels. Conjurer essentially build a force field around this time and place and invite you to disappear into it, only to drag you back out ever so briefly before the next opportunity to snap your own neck presents itself. When Dani Nightingale dedicates Let Us Live to the trans community, declaring that trans people have always existed and always will, it gives the otherwise relentless set a moment of genuine human warmth. That kind of open-hearted conviction is one of the ingredients that elevates Conjurer even higher. Early in the set Dani also quipped, “Thanks for coming to see us and not Electric Wizard, which is where I wish I was.” It gets a proper laugh of recognition, but you’d have to be abandoned by your senses to want to trade in this set.
Conjurer are just getting better and better, and watching them tear through The Fleece makes their trajectory feel increasingly apparent. Let’s have them headline Damnation before too long. If last year’s stellar main stage set is anything to go by, they will go down an absolute storm. Until then, this is 45 minutes of sonic punishment that somehow leaves you feeling cleansed rather than battered; It’s a goddamn bath for the soul.
Gaerea
Following the Conjurer set is a bastard of a proposition. Gaerea walk into a room that has already been thoroughly pummeled. The Portuguese band answer the call in exactly the manner you’d expect, by turning up the theatre. Frontman Guilherme Henriques is all snake hips and perpetual motion, prowling around the stage while impromptu circle pits keep breaking out below him. Sonja Schuringa’s beautiful voice cuts through the black metal-inflected onslaught on a couple of occasions, and the contrast with Henriques’ delivery is perfectly pitched. For all of their self-consciously flamboyant posturing, Gaerea are tight and compelling on stage, and it’s hard to take your eyes off them.
That theatricality is important because Gaerea in 2026 are a somewhat different proposition from the band that made everything from Unsettling Whispers through to Coma. Their newest record Loss pushes much further into melody, clean vocals, electronics and metalcore, and the response to it has been mixed precisely because it sounds so much less like the band people thought they knew. Some of the old black metal severity has been replaced by huge choruses and more straightforward dynamics. On record, that can feel like a strange or even distancing creative decision. Live, it clicks into place a lot more convincingly. The new songs have room to stretch out, and the performance gives them some of the menace that can get lost among the cleaner production on the album. The older material, meanwhile, provides plenty of reminders that this is still a band perfectly capable of making an excoriating noise.
For just shy of 90 minutes, Gaerea throw everything at it. The masks, the movement, the singular physicality that Henrique brings to everything he does, the conducting of the pits, and the sudden shifts from ugly abrasion to something approaching true metal grandeur. Following an incredible Conjurer show (or any Conjurer show) is never going to be easy, but Gaerea wisely don’t try to out-heavy their formidable tour support. They give the room something else to look at as well as listen to, and there’s enough substance beneath the spectacle to make it work. Loss closer Stardust closes the set, and by then the blend of black metal, theatre and giant chunks of melody makes perfect sense. It’s a long way from where Gaerea began, but seeing the new sit alongside the old, and experiencing how much all of it means to the band, well, it makes the journey feel entirely worth the twists and turns.
