‘Football is bigger in the music community than people give it credit for’: the heavy metal hero representing Aston Villa on the world stage

Aston Villa and heavy metal music have had a connection since the very beginning. Birmingham is the home of heavy metal, Black Sabbath its progenitors.

Ozzy Osbourne and his bandmates, bass player and primary songwriter Geezer Butler in particular, were Villa supporters before they were global icons. The world’s greatest music genre was shaped on the streets of Aston just as much as its sound was inspired by Tony Iommi’s intimate familiarity with the city’s heavy industry.

For Brady Deeprose, the link between Villa and metal music isn’t just cultural – it’s personal.

“I grew up in Daventry, which had a huge Villa fan base because of so many people moving over from Birmingham when a lot of factories got moved, but I was the only Villa fan in my entire school,” Deeprose tells me.

“I was surrounded by Manchester United, Chelsea and Liverpool fans that had never set foot in any of those cities and I feel very protective about my team because I’d get bullied for being a Villa fan.

“My dad grew up a really big Villa fan; he grew up in Aston. When my mum met him she wasn’t into football at all but he took her to a game and she was converted from there. She’s also now a massive Villa fan.”

‘Villa need cultural saturation’

Deeprose, who as a child was a mascot for a match against Tottenham Hotspur and walked out onto the Villa Park turf holding hands with striker Milan Baroš, is now all grown up and one of the duelling guitar players and vocalists in Conjurer.

Along with the likes of Rolo Tomassi, VOWER, Pupil Slicer, unpeople, Heriot and so many others, Conjurer are at the forefront of one of the most exciting and creatively varied generations there’s ever been in the UK alternative underground.

With Conjurer and in his role as a tour manager looking after other bands, Deeprose stomps from one continent to the next proudly wearing claret and blue wherever he goes.

“It’s mostly on planes that the Villa shirts get recognised,” he says.

“There was one flight when I was wearing a Villa jumper or something. I’d taken it off when we were getting on this plane in the United States. Did the whole flight back to the UK and put it on as we were getting off and this American flight attendant was like, ‘Oh my god, you’re a Villa fan?’

“I said ‘Yeah’ and he says ‘Me too! We’d have given you so much free stuff on the flight if I’d known!’ I think one of Villa’s biggest issues at the moment is how to achieve that sort of international brand recognition consistently.

“We need a level of cultural saturation for the team to start to really compete financially at the level they want to and it’s like a chicken and egg situation. You need the good results to get the eyes of the world on the team, but then without the growth you don’t have the money to get the results.”

Those Villa shirts will be on display in Europe over the next week before Conjurer return to take their wonderful new album on the road in the UK for the first time. They reach Birmingham on 14th November. It feels like an age since their last headline show in the city.

‘It’s a fascinating time to be a Villa fan’

Along with his converted Villa-supporting American wife, Deeprose has been enjoying Villa’s progress under Unai Emery and managed to keep his cool as the team navigated choppy waters at the start of the Premier League season.

“I think it’s a fascinating time to be a Villa fan,” he says.

“The last few years have been some of the best football I’ve ever seen us play. The drop-off this season was wild. Is that what anyone expected to happen?

“I think missing out on Champions League football was the real cause of it. I think we keep some of those loan players otherwise. Marcus Rashford might have stayed instead of going to Barcelona and we probably make a few more signings.

“I think all of the rumours around Emiliano Martínez and Jacob Ramsey leaving shake the confidence of the dressing room for sure.”

‘Monolithically heavy’

Along with guitarist/vocalist Dani Nightingale, bass player Conor Marshall and drummer Noah See, Deeprose and the current Conjurer line-up pushed themselves to the limit to achieve genuine progress on Unself, their third full-length album, but allowed themselves more creative breathing room than they had on Mire or Páthos.

Conjurer are not for the faint of heart. Their music is monolithically heavy. The brutal aggression reflects an emotional weight that has, until now, been leavened by metaphor. Every member of the band past or present is a master musician and while hearing them playing live is enough to make your guts rumble, it’s quality, intelligence and progressiveness that really make Conjurer what they are.

Unself is a whole new ball game for one of the UK’s finest bands. Its lyrical content is stripped back to raw, personal truths laid bare. Conjurer have always been a thoughtful, emotional, honest band. I’d never before thought of them as vulnerable.

“Something Dani has always been big on is what the story behind an album is,” says Deeprose. “They love the history side of bands. They do their research and look up what certain albums meant at certain times, so it’s always been part of the conversation for us.”

With a tour on the way and Villa back on a firm footing, and fascinated by the idea of a WhatsApp group full of people in bands I love talking about football, I ask Deeprose about the often hidden link between the game and our shared musical territory.

“It’s definitely a bigger thing than a lot of people give it credit for,” he says.

I bloody knew it.

Unself is out now on Nuclear Blast.

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