Prophetae

“Prophetae” is the new album of Primal, of that weird one – man band from Poland. This one is their fourth full length album which was released in August of 2013 and it contains five compositions of an overall duration of about fifty five minutes. Here the listener will come across a lot of similarities but also a lot of differences compared to the previous full length album of the band, the quite good “Obłęd”. The band plays dark Black Metal with intense atmosphere, ambient elements and disharmonic passages that they remind of dsbm.

The tracks mainly are of medium speed, while several times the rhythms will become slower and more torturing. Moreover, the parts where the rhythm will become fast are very few. The riffs are simple, minimalistic, depending on the feeling and the atmosphere we will come across either disharmonic, clean riffs that they are trying to affect the psychology of the listener, either heavy, dark and brutal that they put out a very dark and thick atmosphere. The riffs have simple structure and minimalistic character, while in some parts they have ambient elements. The tracks are long regarding their duration (over ten minutes), much longer than the tracks of “Obłęd”. That demands a very special structure in the tracks and much worked riffs, with changes to the rhythm, to the atmosphere, maybe to the feeling too. Unfortunately, that does not exist in this album that the repetition of the riffs in tracks that are so long and the many times monotonous atmosphere make the tracks somewhat tedious.

The instruments are played with accuracy and with no mistakes. The guitars have heavy and dirty sound while they put out much passion and they deliver the atmosphere of the tracks to the listener easily. The bass is very dirty so that its lines are not clearly audible but it fills the sound well. The drums try with various changes in the style of playing, turnings and outbursts to catch the listener’s eye, but in the biggest part of the album their sound is too dirty and in a lot of parts you can’t even hear them clearly. Their lines have changes but after a point they become somehow repetitive. The vocals are the same mysterious, dark vocals of the previous albums, they quite fit to the style of the album. Finally, the production is very bass and dirty and produces a very heavy but at the same time “mixed up” sound, so much that in some parts it becomes noise that it makes the listen difficult and tires the listener. The mixture has made the volume of the guitars and the bass much louder and has lowered the sound of the drums, so the sound doesn’t have the balance that it needs. The lyrics are not contained in the cd.

I can’t say that the fourth album of Primal satisfied me. On one hand we will find elements that draw our attention, found in the previous albums too, the heavy atmosphere, some interesting riffs, the darkness that they offer. On the other hand, however, we will also come across elements that don’t help the album, such as the long tracks with the mediocre structure, some repetitive riffs and the most important, the tedious sound. “Prophetae” is not so good album and I would suggest you to listen to another of their albums.