Label: Nuclear Blast Records
Release date: April 9, 2021
Production: Mat Sinner
EP length: 20.30 min
Genre: Power Metal / Heavy Metal
Rating: 8.0/10
Greetings, Primal Fear fans. Thanks to their staying power and sheer stubbornness, the band is bigger today than ever before. Their latest albums keep landing higher and higher on the German charts, the ones that measure how popular hard and heavy sounds are, and it has become a fairly regular trend for Primal Fear in a few other countries of the old continent too. Even though the band hasn’t served up anything truly new in a long time. The albums are solid, but they can’t top the golden days, which wrapped up somewhere around »Devil’s Ground« (2004) or, at the very latest, »Seven Seals« (2005). Whoa, that was more than 15 years ago!
Anyway, the quality remains. Even though their current album, the 13th one, “Metal Commando” (2020, RockLine review) feels a bit barren and short on ideas at times, it holds up the overall quality that spoiled the band’s followers in the past. The band released a whole series of singles from that record, and every last one of them »burned«. And that same album also includes the ballad I Will Be Gone, one of its best tracks. The guys decided to rearrange the song and record it as a vocal duet, with Finnish metal diva Tarja Turunen joining Sheepers. The track is fully acoustic with orchestral arrangements, and it works brilliantly. The pairing is on fire. Tarja is Tarja, no doubt about it. The end result really is something new for Primal Fear. Just as they promised.
Now, even though this isn’t a typical metal basher of the kind we’re used to from the mighty Primal Fear, anyone who misses the aggression and the in-your-face punch of the guitar phrasing combined with the thundering double-bass drum barrage will surely be satisfied by Vote of No Confiedece, which would have been the perfect b-side had I Will Be Gone come out as a 12″ or 7″ single. It’s an unreleased track, an epic upbeat-to-mid-tempo Primal Fear number, where you can’t miss Magnus Karlsson’s arranging touch, especially in the mid-eight section, which packs some seriously infectious musicality. The rest of the EP is made up of three songs that were previously only available on the limited edition of »Metal Commando«. So buying the »I Will Be Gone« EP will satisfy fans on this front too, because it means not a single track will slip past them in their already rich collection of Primal Fear releases. While the instrumental Rising Fear works as a prelude, Second To None and Leave Me Alone could easily challenge some of the less convincing moments on »Metal Commando« and, judging by the inspiration, even push them off the album. What both songs have in common is that they feature vocal duets between Mat Sinner (you’ll recognize him by his rock’n’roll nasal vocals) and Ralf Sheepers.
I won’t drag this out. All the true believers among the band’s fans will snap up the »I Will Be Gone« EP. And with it, the band proves that even in a time when the world has been »frozen« for a whole year, they’re still breathing and moving. In their tried-and-true style, which doesn’t disappoint.
Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Tracklist:
1. I Will Be Gone (feat. Tarja Turunen)
2. Vote For No Confidence
3. Rising Fear
4. Leave Me Alone
5. Second to None
Lineup:
Ralf Scheepers – vocals
Mat Sinner – bass, backing vocals
Alex Beyrodt – guitar
Tom Naumann – guitar
Magnus Karlsson – guitar
Michael Ehré – drums
