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Album Review

Employed To Serve – ‘Conquering’ [Album Review]

With ‘Conquering,’ Employed To Serve has produced an absolutely immaculate piece of work, and one that will provide you with the perfect soundtrack to take on life’s shittier moments full in the face.

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Anybody who has crossed paths with Surrey metallic hardcore terrors Employed To Serve will know how the experience is both brutal and exhilarating. Packed with the kind of emotion that easily brings grown men to tears while serving up the sort of metallic fury that ignites lethal mosh pits, Employed To Serve is a band only heading one way. With the release of their eagerly-awaited new offering, Conquering, that rise will only continue to head in the same direction and at a meteoric pace.

A serene intro leads into “Universal Chokehold” where Employed To Serve unleashes the full fury of their metallic hardcore rage on your head. An absolutely scathing opener, hearing vocalist Justine Jones howl “the way feel it, I know you feel it too,” you can just picture a room full of people collectively losing their shit over this. For five minutes this is the sound of someone venting every ounce of anger and makes for a throat-bleeder of an introduction to the album. Having lit the fuse, the rest of Conquering maintains the rage through the mauling “Twist The Blade,” the less-frantic yet still utterly crushing “Sun Up To Sun Down,” and the frankly face-rearranging “Set In Stone.”

Underneath all that anger there are grooves… and, fuck me, those metalcore grooves are huge. Imagine the kind of grooves that made Iowa such a crossover success or have turned While She Sleeps into one of the most potent bands on the UK metal scene and you’ll be just about prepared for the amped-up, neck-snapping mosh of “We Don’t Need You” or the hypnotic chug of “World Ender.” It shouldn’t come as a surprise, though, given that Justine herself revealed “We wanted to go a more metal orientated direction with this album and see how far we could push our musical capabilities.”

An album about standing up in the face of adversity, Conquering is almost like a fifty-minute musical exorcism. Ending with “Stand Alone,” an anthem of a song that wraps everything great about the previous fifty minutes into five minutes of life-affirming, anger-releasing fury, Employed To Serve have produced an absolutely immaculate piece of work and one that will provide you with the perfect soundtrack to take on life’s shittier moments full in the face.

Conquering Track Listing:

1. Universal Chokehold
2. Exist
3. Twist The Blade
4. Sun Up To Sun Down
5. The Mistake
6. We Don’t Need You
7. Set In Stone
8. Mark of the Grave
9. World Ender
10. Conquering
11. Stand Alone

Run Time: 48:40
Release Date: September 17, 2021
Record Label: Spinefarm Records

I have an unhealthy obsession with bad horror movies, the song Wanted Dead Or Alive and crap British game shows. I do this not because of the sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll lifestyle it affords me but more because it gives me an excuse to listen to bands that sound like hippos mating.

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