Primal Massacre

I remember that I was disappointed after the first “Primal Massacre” listening sessions. From my point of view, Vomitory had created three of the best death metal albums of all times. Both “Redemption” and “Revelation Nausea” had triggered gargantuan blasts – and “Blood Rapture” even topped this masterpieces. Due to this background and in view of the fact that stylistic modifications were simply unimaginable, I thought “Primal Massacre” would be the next apocalyptic weapon.

On the one hand, it’s still a mystery to me why I do not like the album as much as its predecessors. Indeed, Vomitory deliver more of the same without any compositional experiment – and that’s actually a good thing. The output sounds energetic, the production is on an equal footing with those of the album’s predecessors and the authenticity of the band is beyond doubt. On the other hand, my disappointment (that I still feel, even 16 years after the release of “Primal Massacre”) is easy to explain. I miss outstanding songs that are able to challenge the excellent detonations of the former albums. The first, the last and only track that comes near to classics such as “Under Clouds of Blood” or “Eternity Appears” is “Retaliation”. It shines with a great flow which is based on a simple, easily comprehensible riff and a profound “melody” during the mid-part. A minimum of tempo shifts ensures a dynamic appearance. A great song, but it fills less than three minutes of the album.

Music is a matter of taste. Sorry for this empty phrase. I just fall back on it in order to underline: the general frame of “Primal Massacre” does not differ from the previous works of the Swedes. You have some blast beats attacks, ultra-heavy mid-tempo sequences, raw, pretty low-tuned guitars, guttural, deep vocals and any other death metal aesthetics you love to experience. Everything is based on the strong, powerful and dense production – as mentioned above, in technical terms “Primal Massacre” does not need to fear any comparison. The mix can be described with the title of the above-average closer; the album appears as the soundtrack of a “Chainsaw Surgery”. Its high degree of vehemence conveys the typical intensity of extreme metal – nonetheless, the quality of the riffs is good, but not unmatchable. Moreover, tracks like “Eternity Appears” had proven evidence that it is possible to combine even wildest death metal with a catchy touch that highlighted single parts. Here the listener is buried by a wave of violence that mainly destroys the sight on individual aspects. It took some time until I realised the nice morbidity of the slow part of “Gore Apocalypse”.

Well, time to stop grumbling. The fifth work of Vomitory presents songs that show the pure essence of the deadly subgenre without suffering from severe mistakes. It stands in the shadow of the previous outputs, but in its own right, it’s an album worth listening and it reflects the band’s unbroken joy of playing. I just regret that Vomitory began to make their monument crumble by releasing these songs.

Primal Massacre represents the fifth death metal full-length for Vomitory. You all know that you cannot expect something revolutionary from this band because their style has always been all about speed and brutality. The only thing that added something different and good to their music was the use of some melodies to add to the solos and to the lead lines to give just a bit of catchiness. Bloody Rapture was good for this reason, when Revelation Nausea didn’t feature this style a lot, risking being a bit more monotonous even for its neverending speed.

With Primal Massacre I cannot find differences from the past albums in terms of brutality and speed, the title-track is here to show it. The style is unvaried with the blast beats, the relentless riffs and the growled vocals. The production is massive and always dark but incredibly powerful. It’s not always so polished but it’s good like this because, as I said, it gives the right obscure touch. “Gore Apocalypse” follows the same style but some riffs are a bit catchier, especially when the band plays on mid-paced style and the lead lines emerge in a good way. These are the points in which you can really understand how the band is good at these sections too, without pointing on the blast beats parts only.

“Stray Bullet Kill” is maybe one of the tracks that differs the most for the other material on this album for its variety. We start with the slow and dark pace to explode with the up tempo as soon the fast bass drums’ progression invades the music to finish on brutal style. “Epidemic (Created to Kill)”, “Autopsy Extravaganza” and “Retaliation” are the most impulsive tracks here and they mostly point on the sheer speed and heaviness. The breaks often are by the middle but I found them a bit too detached in style from the rest, as if the band was forced to slow down a bit even if they didn’t want. Often the crust/grind riffs are well-mixed to the classic brutal death ones and this adds heaviness but only “Retaliation” features some good melodies during the breaks.

“Demons Divine” is maybe the song that points the most on the good guitars riffage and the mid-tempo. The styles are well-mixed and often the slow patterns give us the right heavy and catchy elements to have fun and differ a bit from the rest. The grooving brutality of “Condemned Pride” continues on the same style to be more various and heavy even if the band doesn’t play at the speed of light like on the other tracks; the following “Cursed Revelation” is an example. The final “Chainsaw Surgery” has a good style with a mix of grooving, murky and rotten riffs and the various tempo changes. The blast beats are more present but the track has a good song-writing.

All in all, this is nothing new from Vomitory but they always play good music. When they come to the mid-paced sections they are truly good and this is the point on which I’d use a lot of energy because it’s always pleasant to find a bit of variety among all these furious tracks of pure death metal.

Vomitory is a band that I just so happened to stumble across in the music section of Best Buy. At 9 Dollars I couldn't help but pick up "Primal Massacre". I was drawn in immediately to the wicked cover art featuring many demons and sprits surrounding a lake of fire in hell. As I popped "Primal Massacre" into my CD player, I was blasted with fast yet non grindcore shit sounding drums, deep guttural vocals and nice understandable bass (Which is rare for Brutal Death), both done by Erik Rundqvist. Complimented with technical death metal riffage by guitarists Urban Gustafsson and Ulf Dalegren. A couple examples of great guitar riffage are "Epidemic" and "Stray Bullet Kill".

Lyrically, Vomitory speaks of war, death, and violence, Satan and all the same shit all brutal death bands growl about. Personally, its Vomitory's only down fall, being a lyricist and vocalist of a death metal band myself; I look at lyrics as being important.

The music itself is very fucking heavy and catchy as fuck. Songs such as "Stray Bullet Kill" will have you humming that open riff set over and over in your head. Or the chorus to "Demon's Divine", that has had me growling along "Demon's Divine / Disguised as Messiahs/ Demon's Divine/ Inverted Abhorrence". Hard to explain in words but its catchy. But also at the same time show some of Vomitory's generic qualities.

All in all, Vomitory's "Primal Massacre" is a nice catchy death metal album. Nothing new to the genre of death metal, nothing original, poor lyrics, but still a fun album to bang your head to for 34 minutes. Pick it up only if its cheap, other than that just download some mp3's of "Demon's Divine", "Stray Bullet Kill", and "Epidemic".