Obłęd

The sound of“Obłęd”, the third full length album of Primal is quite weird but at the same time familiar to me. Primal come from Poland, they consist by one member which plays all the instruments, the were formed in 2008 and they have released until today two demos, one split, two EPs and three full length albums. So, “Obłęd” was released in November of 2012 and it contains seven tracks of duration of forty two minutes. By listening to the album we understand that Primal play a very dark Black Metal with some more modern guitar parts while the atmosphere and the feeling that the entire album puts out, quite reminded me of Demoncy.

As Primal himself mentions, the riffs have a modern approach, they are dirty and dark. The listener will mainly encounter mid tempo up to fast riffs, other times brutal and violent, other times rhythmic while the slow parts with weird, eerie and torturing melodies are also here. Primal wants to make quite a lot of changes, regarding the riffs inside his tracks in order to make them more interesting but in some parts they are quite repetitive and tedious. However although the tracks are big in duration, they are well structured and if we disregard the parts that I mentioned before, they are interesting. The guitar is the ruling instrument in the compositions, they are distorted and they put out a brutal-dirty sound which does not make the listen difficult for the listener though. Technically, they don’t have any mistakes and they deliver the riffs with accuracy and passion.

The bass is quite loud in the composition and it can be clearly. Its lines are fast and brutal and they fill the sound in a very nice way while they give a more bassy-Death Metal character to the compositions. The drums must be real drums as they sound very natural and their lines are awesome. With many changes between the slow and the fast parts, turnings, solos and generally with a very good performance, they make the compositions more interesting. The vocals are in the exact same style as Demoncy, that is brutal whispers which fit to the style of the compositions but they are not anything memorable. The production is dirty and quite bassy but it doesn’t make the listen difficult at all and it highlights the compositions. The mix is good as all the instruments are at the correct volume and the listener can listen to them clearly, but without the sound to lose its massive character. The lyrics aren’t contained in the cd and if I understood correctly, they are written in Polish.

Although I haven’t listened to any of the previous releases of the band in order to talk about their improvement or not, “Obłęd” is an album which has its interesting moments but also its tedious ones. Moreover, the heavy, bassy sound can be also tedious for the listener. On the other hand, however, the listener can listen to the tracts pleasantly because of their good structure and of some really interesting parts. Generally this album is quite special and it demands the listener’s attention during the listen. I don’t suggest it to everyone.