(On March 30th Metal Blade will release Primordial’s new album, and Andy Synn reviews it below.)
Success, or so they say, can be a double-edged sword. And, if the reviews I’ve seen thus far are any indication, this is something that Primordial are finally discovering with the release of their ninth album, Exile Amongst the Ruins.
On the one hand are those people who have seen fit to declare this album a “masterpiece”, a “superlative triumph”, a “stunning success”, before they’ve even properly heard it, content as they are to blindly believe that the Irish quintet can do no wrong, while on the other are those whose reaction to Exile… can perhaps best be summed up as “slightly unhinged”, castigating the album as a titanic disappointment because it fails, in their estimation, to live up to the extremely high standards of their very best work.
And, of course, since so much of today’s music press is dedicated to the pursuit of exaggeration and excess over clarity and nuance, these voices have been amplified to the point where you’d be forgiven for being convinced that this album is either the best thing ever written, or the absolute worst… and nothing in between.
But the truth, unsurprisingly, is more complicated than that. Continue reading »