Primal Fear - Devil's Ground
2004 - Nuclear Blast
By Philip Whitehouse
Now, anyone who reads my reviews regularly will know that, generally speaking, I avoid trad/prog/power metal albums like the plague. I think it's something to do with the gag reflex that occurred when I first saw the cover of
Manowar's Anthology disc, but I can't stand 80s-centric, NWOBHM-corpse-humping acts... or, that is, until I whacked
Primal Fear latest and fifth album into the CD player. Praise the goat, I've been converted... more or less.
While there's nothing overly revolutionary about
Devil's Ground - you can still tell Ralf wants to be Rob Halford
sooooo much it hurts, and the dual influences of
Gamma Ray and
Judas Priest are still pretty much the be-all and end-all of the music - but goddamnit, if this isn't the most powerful, sincere, uplifting and energetic heavy metal album of the last five years, then I'll eat my furry boots. Right from the beginning of the album, where Ralf banshee-wails the clarion call 'Metal is foreve-e-e-e-e-e-er!', I was hooked. Usually an opening like that would have immediately instigated an experiment into whether CDs can be put through paper-shredders, but as soon as the instruments kicked in, I was transfixed. I looked like Saul on the road to Damascus.
The guitar riffs are immense, particularly the solos - 'Visions Of Fate' is a mid-tempo crusher with a killer shred-section, for instance - and the rhythm section is tight, punchy and powerful. The production is impressive, and Ralf's range is considerable (although a bit of individuality wouldn't go amiss). Sadly, the songwriting is a little inconsistent - for every epic power ballad like 'The Healer' there seems to be an iffy filler track like 'In Metal' - and, like I said, nothing revolutionary is being done here.
So perhaps I'm wrong to like this album as much as I do, but hell - love of music is an irrational response in itself, and when an album can get me headbanging as hard as this one can, who cares if it's wrong when it feels so right. Metaaaaaaaal!
8/10
Primal Fear Official Website
Nuclear Blast Website
