(Andy Synn reviews the new album by Ireland’s Primordial, with a new video from the band at the end.)
If the world were a fairer place, then I have no doubt that Primordial would be one of the biggest metal acts in the world by now. If the world rewarded raw passion and creativity the way it should, they’d be playing arenas and selling albums by the bucket-load, bringing their majestic brand of misery and majesty to all corners of the globe.
But the world isn’t fair. It seems most metalheads prefer to regress towards the lowest-common-denominator wherever possible, and that most popular music fans prefer things served up to them in lightweight, easily digestible chunks.
And that’s just the way things are. Sex sells, and so does simplicity. But it’s not really adding anything real, or particularly meaningful, to the world, is it? It’s been said many times that “pop will eat itself”. Well pop has eaten itself so many times now that all we’re left with is an endless cycle of eat-defecate-eat-regurgitate that’s sapped whatever little value from the music that it originally had.
We continue to consume, unaware that we’re starving ourselves to death.
It’s why I’m thankful for bands like Primordial. Bands who write and perform not for fame and fortune, and not to please some imagined audience, but for themselves, for the message, for the sheer cathartic joy of creation. Continue reading »