Primordial - How It Ends

Angry Metal Guy

“Is this how it ends?” “We are devoured by time.” The latter phrase is the first lyric on Primordial’s How It Ends; the former is one of the last. The champs of epic metal return with their first album since 2018’s Exile Amongst the Ruins and tenth overall. The new batch of material obsesses over endings and the concept of finality, filtering this preoccupation through Primordial’s long-established formula of galloping rippers and stately marches. The slab’s title and its themes reflect both the state of the world and, inevitably, the state of Primordial. A.A. Namtheanga, the band’s ace frontman and a prolific sharer of opinions via podcast, has teased the possibility that this is their swan song. If this is the last time these Irish stalwarts take the field, can they add a final victory to their triumphant tally… or will AMG‘s tyrannical Law of Diminishing Recordings invoke the right of prima nocta on Namtheanga and cohorts?

Primordial doesn’t sound like other bands; other bands sound like Primordial. The outfit synthesized NWoBHM, black and folk metal, and pride in their Irish heritage into a sound that’s wholly their own. Bands like the fantastic Darkest Era may have followed in Primordial’s footsteps. but no one questions that these Celts claimed the territory first. Grymm‘s review of Exile Amongst the Ruins noted that the foursome added strains of U2’s yearning sincerity to their epic compositions, and that trend continues here. Here are eleven songs (!) spanning seventy-seven minutes (!!), each one weaving the theme of impermanence into tracks that sound just like what you’d expect from Primordial. That’s not always a bad thing–How It Ends kicks off with four epic numbers that soar on the wings of dynamic songwriting and Namtheanga’s always passionate vocals. Alas, the album eventually wanders off into the fen, bogging down in a long and turgid stretch that kills its early momentum. How It Ends isn’t a humiliating defeat for this storied act, but neither do they cover themselves in glory.

The Primordial songwriting mill can still separate wheat from chaff. The four proper songs that kick off the album (interrupted partway through by the folky interlude “Tradisiùnta”) can take their place among the band’s better work. “How It Ends” leans towards Primordial’s somber side as it establishes the record’s themes. “Ploughs to Rust, Swords to Dust” and “We Shall Not Serve” are epic-length bangers bolstered by Namtheanga’s defiant vocals. He seems determined to flout time itself here, and his performance is good enough to overcome the lyrics’ tendency toward cliche. The doom-inflected march of “Pilgrimage to the World’s End” lives within the outfit’s storytelling tradition. How It Ends kicks off with four quality songs that seem to reckon with Primordial’s legacy and the questions everyone faces when looking back on the choices that define their life. The songs have enough ideas to earn their lengthy run times, and it’s a promising start…

… one that dissipates over a boring and threadbare stretch. “Call to Cernunnos” emphasizes the folk with a stirring riff that becomes less stirring as it repeats, and then finally not stirring at all when Primordial drives it into the ground over six dull minutes. “All Against All” is an outright misfire that features a lengthy section where Namtheanga seems to be imitating a didgeridoo with his wordless vocals. “Death Holy Death” marks an improvement, but the songs in this section lean too hard on A.A. Namtheanga’s performance and lyrics, and not enough on the music itself. The album’s sequencing suggests that Primordial knows about the issues on How It Ends. The quality material is clustered together and front-loaded, and the outfit has the good sense to save the killer “Victory has 1,000 Fathers, Defeat is an Orphan” for the album’s final track. There’s a lack of discipline here–if the band knew about the issues, they should have done some editing and cutting instead of releasing an overly long and often tedious album. You might call this The Senjutsu Effect, and Primordial succumbs to it hard in the back half of How It Ends.

“Every empire will fall, every monument crumble.” That lyric, from Primordial’s towering classic To the Nameless Dead, hangs like a louring cloud over How It Ends. This new set isn’t quite The Decline and Fall of Primordial; there’s too much good stuff for that. But it’s an underwhelming return from a long layoff, and it’s reasonable to expect more from these legends than this long, slack set.

Rating: 2.5/5.0
DR: 7 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Metal Blade Records
Websites: primordialofficial.com | primordial.bandcamp.com
Releases Worldwide: September 29th, 2022

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