No "Conquer"ing here

Those who know about the Hydra Head label associate it with the heavy, sprawling and inventive metal music that is conducive to head banging or other equally impressive movements that will allow your extremities to flail about or shift in some sort of complementary fashion. Releasing efforts from ISIS, Pelican, Converge, and Botch among others, the label seems to have no shortage of sludgy, loud and/or envelope-pushing bands on the roster. Jesu fits in nicely alongside these bands and gives the Hydra Head label a taste of their intense post-rock panache that they have been perfecting since 2004. \nJesu is the brainchild of Justin Broadrick, a man known for his work with the equally intense bands Napalm Death and Godflesh. Following a reported breakdown in 2002, Broadrick moved away from the industrial and grindcore sound he had been accustomed to and took steps to develop the more expansive and texture-driven Jesu. Following Jesu's first release in 2004, Broadrick enlisted the help of Ted Parsons and Diarmuid Dalton on drums and bass, respectively, to assist in molding Jesu into the post-rock monolith that it is today.\nJesu's newest album, Conqueror, is their follow-up to 2006's Silver EP. Conqueror trudges through eight epic tracks full of punchy rhythms, discordant guitars, murky bass lines, penetrating vocals and towering walls of static. Conqueror takes the open song structures and cerebral approach of post-rock and combines it with the droning, engulfing and sometimes atonal tendencies of shoegaze. The end result is a listening experience that exudes an eerie beauty and fosters a disconcerting mood.\nThe album succeeds in creating a haunting and almost space-like atmosphere, but this atmosphere begins to aggravate around the time the album is halfway finished. It seems as though you've heard everything Conqueror has to offer before it's even close to being over. It's not that the songs are bad, but their development is sluggish and unrewarding even though the band managed to create an extremely dense and pervasive musical setting.\nThough the album has a great deal of factors working in its favor, it simply wasn't as engaging or interesting as the band's first full-length release. Unfortunately, the album couldn't manage to conquer the tediousness that keeps it from being as strong as the band's previous work. Conqueror is still worth checking out along with the band's back catalog for fans of heavy music who want a break from growling vocals, double bass blasts and face-melting guitar work.