Given the incestuous nature of the Irish music scene, you’d have thought that a band who’ve been around over ten years, released five albums and received great acclaim across Europe would feature quite prominently on the radar. So how come Dublin’s Primordial aren’t exactly household names? The answer is simple – they play metal. Not the kind of post-ironic metal that abounds in these post-Darkness days but the real, dark deal.
Titles like ‘The Song Of The Tomb’ and ‘The Coffin Ships’ say it all; this is black music for black times. It’s also quite unexpectedly thrilling. From the crushing opening riff of ‘The Golden Spiral’ through each seven minute plus epic, the music is complex and intricate. While its extremity doesn’t exactly invite the casual listener to climb on board, they aren’t that averse to melody and song structure – it’s just that the lyric sheet is a non-stop atrocity exhibition of death, doom and destruction.
For all we like to think of our set of alternative bands as being beyond the mainstream, Primordial really are standing on the outside looking in – don’t expect to see them on Other Voices too soon. It might scare the shit out of you, but The Gathering Wilderness thoroughly deserves to be heard.