Reviewed by Eric Saeger
Proffering their (relative) Irishness to the ever-eager whitey masses comes Primordial, one of the more interesting power-sludge bands to be heard nowadays, owing to a slightly wonkish nod to their heritage. But only slightly; this ain’t Glengarry Bhoys, it’s what the kids call ‘extreme metal’ with a great marketing angle – sludgy black metal with a pirate accent, for example, in ‘Fallen to Ruin’, like what would happen if Blackbeard came back from the dead to front [insert name of any pancake-makeup-metal band from Norway] (best part: the singer literally sounds like he’s getting strangled at the end of it). Things get downright theatrical in ‘Cast to the Pure’ and ‘Songs of the Morrigan’, the main issue with the whole thing is the verisimilitude of the riffing, which seems to be one idea, in one key, with no way to escape.
Grade: B-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1eTUEiPShg
