Primal Fear
Rulebreaker
Frontiers Music Srl
2016
I guess that the title that the German Power metallers have chosen is a little ironic. I mean with bands like Primal Fear, in most cases, what you can expect is relatively little change in the overall style with the quality ranging depending on how inspired the musicians might be, when composing for a specific album. With some eleven albums in eighteen years, things with these guys have become both pretty standard and routinely and while the band manages to avoid disappointing basically, because they got a few good writers and are seasoned enough to know what works and what doesn’t … that isn’t always the case with the past few albums treading an uneasy balance between being boring and preaching to the converted… which I suppose is what they do, cater their own fans…
“Angel of Mercy” is a cliché muscular, metallic opener that I suppose works well, as it bastardizes Accept and Priest and molds them into a formula that works…
“The End is Near”, which also came out as a video, is a bit more “commercial” in a by-the numbers way, and it’s only a quirky lead off that sort of sounds a little “fresh”… still the whole style is tested and should work well on stage…
“Bullets and Tears” sounds too derivative, of whoever is an influence to the band and no matter how hard Ralf Scheepers tries, he can’t really pull the tune from mediocrity that the nice lead and decent chorus at least alleviate…
“Rulebreaker” starts in a promising way and again, sees Scheepers trying hard, but it’s so full of cliché lyrics and ideas, it again hardly manages to sound too original.
“In Metal We Trust” is one of those metal “pride” numbers that I find absolutely cringe-worthy, most of the times. Scheepers “saves” the tune, but if I thought the previous couple of tunes were a bit “cliché”, guess what lyrics like “in metal we trust, for metal we live” and “raise your fist”… are doing for me!
“We Walk Without Fear” clocks at eleven plus minutes and I was prepared to have a field day… but it’s actually a pretty nice tune. Obviously it has a long intro and solos to feed the chicken with... (plenty) it even has some orchestra hits in the seventh minute to really push another more impressive solo in... before it reprises in the last couple of minutes. In reality, I’d have kept one of the two “big” solos for another song, but despite being too long, this is actually one of the better songs on the album.
“At War With the World” goes back to a more by the numbers approach. Obviously, the band manages to pull off these songs in a better way than it has in a while and I wonder if the return of Tom Naumann (ex-Sinner) on guitars has got anything to do with that... he seems to have been part of the better eras of the band and this is like his third tenure with the band…
“The Devil in Me” is slower and more melodic, in a way that could make it a good concert staple and “Constant Heart” sounds a lot like something that would have loved to have been in Priest’s “Ram It Down”, despite the somewhat odd chorus.
“The Sky is Burning-1” is a slow, mournful song, (but not really a ballad) that explodes towards the end into a nice chorus… another one of the “better” moments of the album…
Lastly, “Raving Mad” is more of the same riffy mid-tempo mediocrity,] that tries too hard to sound like Accept at their peak, but doesn’t really manage to do that. The guitars and Scheepers manage to keep the song as well as the entire album from collapsing, but I’m not sure if this is really “great”…
Playing on the strengths of having a great singer like Ralf Scheepers and no less than three guitarists currently, all of who are pretty decent writers too (not to mention Sinner, who is also a writer/producer) Primal Fear continue their “flight” with little “turbulence”. They might have delivered a slightly better album than their past couple of efforts, but really they are as formulaic as they come and not on the same level as Priest or Accept at their commercial peak (with UDO of course)… still there are a lot of things that are worse, so this is “Accept”-able, I guess…
“Angel of Mercy” is a cliché muscular, metallic opener that I suppose works well, as it bastardizes Accept and Priest and molds them into a formula that works…
“The End is Near”, which also came out as a video, is a bit more “commercial” in a by-the numbers way, and it’s only a quirky lead off that sort of sounds a little “fresh”… still the whole style is tested and should work well on stage…
“Bullets and Tears” sounds too derivative, of whoever is an influence to the band and no matter how hard Ralf Scheepers tries, he can’t really pull the tune from mediocrity that the nice lead and decent chorus at least alleviate…
“Rulebreaker” starts in a promising way and again, sees Scheepers trying hard, but it’s so full of cliché lyrics and ideas, it again hardly manages to sound too original.
“In Metal We Trust” is one of those metal “pride” numbers that I find absolutely cringe-worthy, most of the times. Scheepers “saves” the tune, but if I thought the previous couple of tunes were a bit “cliché”, guess what lyrics like “in metal we trust, for metal we live” and “raise your fist”… are doing for me!
“We Walk Without Fear” clocks at eleven plus minutes and I was prepared to have a field day… but it’s actually a pretty nice tune. Obviously it has a long intro and solos to feed the chicken with... (plenty) it even has some orchestra hits in the seventh minute to really push another more impressive solo in... before it reprises in the last couple of minutes. In reality, I’d have kept one of the two “big” solos for another song, but despite being too long, this is actually one of the better songs on the album.
“At War With the World” goes back to a more by the numbers approach. Obviously, the band manages to pull off these songs in a better way than it has in a while and I wonder if the return of Tom Naumann (ex-Sinner) on guitars has got anything to do with that... he seems to have been part of the better eras of the band and this is like his third tenure with the band…
“The Devil in Me” is slower and more melodic, in a way that could make it a good concert staple and “Constant Heart” sounds a lot like something that would have loved to have been in Priest’s “Ram It Down”, despite the somewhat odd chorus.
“The Sky is Burning-1” is a slow, mournful song, (but not really a ballad) that explodes towards the end into a nice chorus… another one of the “better” moments of the album…
Lastly, “Raving Mad” is more of the same riffy mid-tempo mediocrity,] that tries too hard to sound like Accept at their peak, but doesn’t really manage to do that. The guitars and Scheepers manage to keep the song as well as the entire album from collapsing, but I’m not sure if this is really “great”…
Playing on the strengths of having a great singer like Ralf Scheepers and no less than three guitarists currently, all of who are pretty decent writers too (not to mention Sinner, who is also a writer/producer) Primal Fear continue their “flight” with little “turbulence”. They might have delivered a slightly better album than their past couple of efforts, but really they are as formulaic as they come and not on the same level as Priest or Accept at their commercial peak (with UDO of course)… still there are a lot of things that are worse, so this is “Accept”-able, I guess…