Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Primal Fear
Label: Frontiers Records
Release: 2018
Running time: 50:22
Rating: 4.5/5
Primal Fear, the long-lived German power metallers from Eslingen near Stuttgart, may well be in the best position they’ve been in since they officially entered the music business. This year marks 20 years since the release of their cult self-titled debut, which at the end of the last millennium helped spark a revival of melodic and classic pure metal, back when we started lumping such new metal bands together under the label »power metal«.
Primal Fear have come a long way in twenty years. The lineup is made up of seasoned veterans of the music business and outstanding musicians who have tried their hands, and still do, at all sorts of other projects and bands. For a long time Primal Fear’s style was strictly and clearly mapped out, following its drawn-up musical geometry without compromise. Then, somewhere around the album »New Religion« (2007), they started reaching for other musical ingredients too, slowly folding them, with more or less success, into their firmly staked-out power metal sound.
Never mind that these days everyone’s »competing« over who’s cooler for pulling on the shirt of the most extreme metal band on the planet. Meanwhile, »outdated« power metal is storming back into the spotlight through new-generation acts like Sabaton, Powerwolf and Gloryhammer. And they pull it off with ease, despite their incredible generic-ness (compensated with stage kitsch). That very fact is also a big help to bands with much longer track records, a far higher artistic profile and a more precisely honed sound and style, since a »freshly hooked« Euro power metal fan who discovers Sabaton quickly goes on to discover, among others, Primal Fear, HammerFall and/or Blind Guardian. »Apocalypse« is a long way from leaning on the tricks of the newcomers and much younger bands, and compared with everything since »New Religon« it’s definitely the most accomplished and mature Primal Fear record yet. If its predecessor »Rulebreaker« ran out of steam a bit thanks to a mild creative fatigue and a lack of freshness, »Apocalypse« is its opposite. It delivers an extremely successful, convincing and, across the whole album, superbly paced and balanced mix of orchestral elements with the classic Primal Fear sound. If anyone remembers the Sinner album »Nature of Evil«, let me hint that the instrumental passage leading into the acoustic section of Eye of the Storm is compositionally linked to the title track of that cult Sinner album, which might be a parallel that convinces you right away that »Apocalypse« really is one of the best albums of Primal Fear’s career so far.
Production-wise, too, »Apocalypse« is a superb achievement. The delicacy of the extra layered lines from the »siren-like« Scheepers, who »dresses up« his lead vocal lines with harmonies, absolutely shines. Once again there’s the outstanding soloing firepower of three exceptional lead guitarists, and the tight drum rolls in the transitions, which boost the flow of the songs and which, almost proverbially, we always enjoy on Primal Fear albums. The mood shifts are excellent too. For all its theatrical, epic musicality, the album is also dark enough, black even, and it bites relentlessly apocalyptic, in tune with its telling title. The intro and the first two bashers don’t yet hint at the great artistic maturity the album delivers later, as it moves through the excellent Blood, Sweat & Fear, Supernova, Hail to the Fear, The Beast and especially the centerpiece of the album, the superb mini epic suite Eye of the Evil, in terms of variety, polished song structures and shifts in atmosphere, then swings up into a top-notch finish with the anthemic march Cannonball, which finally »washes« the virus called humanity off the face of planet Earth.
It shouldn’t be overlooked that Primal Fear, whom we most often see on stage as a quintet, are actually a sextet. For more than ten years they’ve had help from the exceptional, hyperactive Swedish genius Magnus Karlsson, who reads the wishes of his bosses Mat Sinner and Ralf Scheepers perfectly and, when it comes to tasteful and successful integration of orchestrations, acoustic passages and novelties, skillfully pours them into the band’s classic framework of charging riffs. Primal Fear have never pulled off anything as epic and bombastic, or as musically open-minded and inventive, as what »Apocalypse« delivers.
Lineup
Ralf Scheepers – vocals
Tom Naumann – guitar
Alex Beyrodt – guitar
Magnus Karlsson – guitar, keyboards
Mat Sinner – bass, vocals
Francesco Jovino – drums
Production
Jacob Hansen & Mat Sinner
Track list
01. Apocalypse
02. New Rise
03. The Ritual
04. King Of Madness
05. Blood, Sweat, & Fear
06. Supernova
07. Hail To The Fear
08. Hounds Of Justice
09. The Beast
10. Eye Of The Storm
11. Cannonball
