ALBUM REVIEW: How It Ends – Primordial

PRIMORDIAL, Ireland’s masters of Celtic folk-tinged black metal, return with their long awaited tenth album How It Ends and as it has been five years since their last opus Exile Amongst The Ruins, anticipation is high for their return. Fortunately, they don’t disappoint at all with this record.

PRIMORDIAL waste absolutely no time in getting the listener reacquainted with all that makes them such a special band and as the stirring opening title track blasts out triumphantly you can’t help but feel happy that the band have returned. They still deliver their music with passion and a vivacity which is impressive when you consider that the band are three decades into making music, and it is that passion that makes (and has always made) PRIMORDIAL stand out from so many black metal bands. They sound just as fresh as they did when they first emerged all those years ago, and although they are still a black metal band at heart, they have forged their own unique sound and identity even more at this point and it is fully and proudly on display on this album.

With the band’s core line-up of vocalist A.A. Nemtheanga, guitarist Ciarán MacUilliam, bassist Pól MacAmlaigh and drummer Simon O’Laoghaire having been together as a unit for so long, you know that the music they make will be delivered well and that is definitely the case on How It Ends. Tracks like the black metal groove of  Ploughs To Dust, Swords To Rust, the triumphant Pilgrimage To The World’s End, the primal rage of Nothing New Under The Sun and the atmospheric All Against All are all epic pieces of metal that showcase all that makes PRIMORDIAL exactly the band they are. Elsewhere, the instrumental brilliance of both Traidisiúnta and Call To Cernunnos act as riveting interludes and while they deliver different vibes, they definitely complement the band’s huge sounding epics.

How It Ends reaches its crescendo with All Against All and Death Holy Death segueing into the album closer Victory Has 1000 Fathers, Defeat Is An Orphan which ends things on a sheer victorious high, especially with the emotional instrumental outro that precedes the last vocal flourish that finishes the song off. This is an album that not only celebrates PRIMORDIAL as a band from start to finish, as well as their history and their legacy, but it also salutes everything that they stand for, and the fact that they are still here doing this after all these years must be appreciated and applauded in equal measure.

Rating: 8/10

How It Ends is out now via Metal Blade Records.

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