Album Review: Primal Fear - Apocalypse

When Primal Fear started, there was a need for their existence. Judas Priest was falling off a cliff, and Ralph Scheepers used the notoriety from his audition to start a band to fill the void of classic Priest. For most of the last twenty years, there has been plenty of room for both bands, because the bigger name was wallowing in late-career ennui. But now that they have roared back to form with an album that most are calling their best since "Painkiller" (to me one of the most overrated albums of all time), what is the point of Primal Fear? Do we still need a copy when the original is in good shape?

The other thing regarding Primal Fear is that, other than one album where they ventured very slightly outside their comfort zone, every album delivers exactly the same thing. We get pounding traditional heavy metal with soaring vocals... exactly like people remember from Judas Priest. It is consistency for the fans, but tedious for those of us who never thought Maiden vs Priest was even a discussion. Frankly, after having gone through the last three or four Primal Fear albums in this role, I'm desperate to be surprised by the band.

Unfortunately, they aren't capable of delivering what I was looking for. The album kicks off with a string of songs that pound and blister, while Scheepers wails away. His voice has always sounded a bit odd to me, and when he strains to sound as heavy as the band wants to be, it gets worse. "The Ritual" is where they fall into the abyss, with a plodding riff that isn't particularly interesting, and the chorus is Scheepers struggling to make a flat and boring melody sound tough. It doesn't, and it comes across as complete filler.

If they could stick to material like "King Of Madness", there is plenty of potential to do good work. That song, which was a single, establishes a groove and has one of the most melodic choruses on the record. It still isn't what I would classify as 'hooky', but the sound is refreshing after the first two tracks offer nothing but stereotypical metal.

Then we get "Blood Sweat & Fear", which is the most blatant Priest song on an album of them. It's of similar quality to "Firepower", but it does the exact same thing, which makes it harder to take Primal Fear seriously. Two decades into their run, we still can't listen to one of their records without the comparison hitting us in the face like a bug splattering on a windshield. Frankly, I find it a bit sad they have never established their own identity.

There are hints of what could be in "Supernova", where some strings and extra guitar harmonies make their sound bigger and more lush. That is the same divergence I mentioned earlier that they tried during their "Seven Seals" phase. I enjoyed those twists, and I like them here too. But when we only get one of them on a record, it's a false tease that makes the rest of the pastiche harder to swallow.

So what we wind up with is another mixed bag album, which is what you get from a band with several distinctive songwriters all contributing. In addition to the aforementioned good tracks, there is also "Hounds Of Justice" delivering quality melodic heavy metal, but there is half of the record which is tired and dull, and doesn't play at all to Scheepers ability to sing. Ever since Rob Halford started shrieking in place of singing a real melody, metal bands have been following suit, to painful results. Primal Fear has never been able to resist that urge, and it hurts them.

"Apocalypse" is a Primal Fear album as they all are; flawed. The band has the potential to do great things, and if you love Judas Priest like gods, they already do. But for the rest of us, they fall into the same category that Greta Van Fleet does in the mainstream now; a copy that claims not to be a copy, when we all know they're a copy. And good as they might be at recreating a sound, that is always less interesting than being original.