Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Primal Fear
Label: Frontiers Records
Release: 2012
Length: 61:42
Rating: 4/5
Germany’s “metal eagles” Primal Fear remain faithful to their two-year gap between studio releases. Or let’s say two and a half. After 2009, when “16.6.” came out in mid-May, here we are with “Unbreakable”. Nothing new, those of you who’ve followed the band since forever will say. Nothing new, will also say everyone a bit more casual who knows at least one Primal Fear studio album released before “Unbreakable”, no matter which. And really, there’s nothing new. Or whatever is new, the changes are so tiny that they don’t set off even the most innocently mild twitch of a poker face. Nothing new. Just a return to the roots.
Between the two albums, Primal Fear went through another lineup change. The shuffle hit the guitarist spot again, which is where the shuffles usually happen in Primal Fear. They’ve swapped drummers only once, while the brotherly tandem of Matt Sinner and Ralf Scheppers stays the constant. Without the latter, there’s simply no Primal Fear. Anyway, anyone who sailed off to see the band on the German leg of the tour in November 2009, when Primal Fear were presenting “16.6.”, was surprised to find Alex Beyrodt on stage next to Henny Wolter, filling in at the time (due to family obligations) for the absent Magnus Karlsson. In the end, though, the cards fell so that Henny Wolter was the one who left the band, and Alex Beyrodt took his spot in Primal Fear. Anyone who knows Beyrodt won’t be the least bit surprised. As far as his music career goes, the man is tied closely, one way or another, to Matt Sinner, through his band Voodoo Circle, through Sinner’s own band Sinner, and through other joint projects. So Beyrodt is a more than proven and reliable name for Primal Fear.
And the guitar solos across the album are of course upgraded and wound up with venomous teeth like they haven’t been in ages. Probably not since the golden days when Naumann and Leibing were blasting them out together. Like Karlsson, Beyrodt is a classically trained guitarist. What’s more, Beyrodt is known for a real Malmsteen obsession in his guitar playing. He even uses the same brand of guitar, and he dolls himself up in a similar way when he hits the stage. Beyrodt brought some of those “Malmsteenesque” skills over to Primal Fear. And there were no lessons needed. Simple as that. Since Beyrodt co-shaped the best Sinner records, the ones released between 1996 and 2003 (the only four that were properly metal-possessed), he knows exactly how to serve up solos for Primal Fear too. The Magnus Karlsson – Alex Beyrodt pairing has proven excellent. In individual songs we again run into more of the ornamentation of double guitar harmonies in thirds, which at times brings the new release closer to the older Primal Fear albums, especially the first three, or even to the early Gamma Ray albums.
Magnus Karlsson and his innate Scandinavian touch for understanding the perfect melody have been implemented into Primal Fear’s music. Primal Fear started exploiting that with “New Religion”, and it reached its full effect with the album “16.6.”! With that album, the most daring one in what you could call their “filed-down, immovable career rut”, Primal Fear proved that their sworn steel template can withstand the infectiousness of melodic rock impulses, and that their sharpness can lose not a single grain of its proverbial “bite” in the process. Some of Magnus Karlsson’s arrangements showed this, reflected above all in the heavier use of keyboards, while the guitar riffs handled it just fine. “Unbreakable”, though, puts things back on the classic Primal Fear track. The keyboards are kept, or where they appear, they’re built in to create atmospheric effects like the similar moments on the album “Devil’s Ground”. That goes for the excellent mid-tempo mood piece Born Again, and they bind most effectively with the metallic mockery when the guys tackle the anthemic, epic eight-and-a-half-minute Where Angels Die, which the band pulled off fantastically. It combines everything in just the right dose. It keeps up an exceptional anthemic excitement of epic bombast, a highly compatible blending of lead motifs, a graduated build-up of mood into an explosive chorus melody, and an excellent dialogue between the two guitarists in the stretched-out instrumental middle section. Truly the peak of the album! The melancholic, steel-hardened orgasm of the album, experienced at a mid-tempo pace! And Ubreakable (pt II) astonishes with how the arrangements shift over its running time. At moments, with the harmonies used over the riffs, they even get close to old Iron Maiden, and at the very least to old Gamma Ray. Primal Fear really haven’t sounded as classic as on this album since “Nuclear Fire”. And There Was Silence is an example of an excellent turn back to the album “Nuclear Fire” and its title track (harmonic twitching over riffs, sitting on an ultra-accelerated tempo). Marching Again hits especially hard as retro Primal Fear, and all the true metal fanatics will no doubt bang their heads clean off to it. Most of the songs are relentlessly charged metal slaps in the face, grinding away over the ultra-voltage rolling of the double bass drum pedals. The riffing is venomously possessed in a way we haven’t heard since the days when Tom Naumann was writing the guitar lines.
Of course there are a few clichéd phrases that Primal Fear have already worn out plenty in the past, and these come across as mildly naive. One of those gems is the chorus shout of “Bang Your Head!!!!” (unbelievably, Primal Fear are actually playing the 2012 edition of that German festival) in Bad Guys Wore Black, whose verse is based on a guitar phrase that pants like Accept. Another of the band’s umpteen-times-sold “gems” hides in the worn-out chorus melody of Metal Nation. The opener Strike is the Final Embrace of the new millennium (that verse!!!). The album closes with the Priest-style Conviction, a proven choice for the band, known for similar moves on past albums. If we stumble once more over the band’s eternal flirting with Judas Priest, we find more of it in the nicely rolling Give ‘Em Hell. But that won’t bother the band’s fans in the slightest, since it only stirs up more feelings of nostalgia in them. But that’s fans for you.
Ralf Scheppers keeps all of his excellence and bearing as one of the finest heavy metal vocalists in Germany and Europe. A man who’s been actively involved in the music business since the mid-eighties hasn’t lost a speck of his vocal explosiveness and exceptional caliber in all these years. Ralf sings superbly and breathtakingly even in the highest registers. Like an air-raid siren. With feather-light ease he carries his developed power from the mid-range up into the heights and screams with undiminished force in the highest vocal registers. A masterful execution by a vocalist who absolutely shines with his vocal poise! We can safely say that this Scheppers expressiveness often dominates again and stands out in the songs, compared with the other building blocks.
“Unbreakable” is an album Primal Fear actually had to make, for themselves and for their fans. After a few albums of experimenting, a return to the roots is more than welcome. Fans had slowly started to miss an album like this, so they’ll snatch up the new record, the band will sell more shirts through official merch on tour, and as a result their shows will draw in a few more curious newcomers. So for Primal Fear, “Unbreakable” is once again a more old-school focused album. It maintains a high level of compactness and a clear focal point. Compact like it hasn’t been in ages. Compact in the sense that it stays faithful to the orthodox, Teutonic steel-hardened heavy metal stance of their first five albums. “Unbreakable” is no surprise. Nothing new. It’s a return to the sound and style of the first three Primal Fear albums and, as far as the bombastic seasoning of mid-tempo anthemic songs with keyboards goes, to the album “Devil’s Ground”.
Line-up
Ralf Scheepers – vocals, backing vocals
Alex Beyrodt – guitar
Magnus Karlsson – guitar, keyboards
Mat Sinner – bass guitar & backing vocals
Randy Black – drums, percussion
Production
Matt Sinner & Achim Koehler
Track list
1. Unbreakable (Part 1) (1:37)
2. Strike (4:39)
3. Give ‘Em Hell (3:05)
4. Bad Guys Wear Black (3:31)
5. And There Was Silence (5:13)
6. Metal Nation (5:11)
7. Where Angels Die (8:09)
8. Unbreakable (Part 2) (6:05)
9. Marching Again (5:41)
10. Born Again (4:48)
11. Blaze Of Glory (3:56)
12. Conviction (3:49)
13. Night Of The Jumps (3:57)*
*…bonus track added to the digipack version of the album
