While Primordial’s later albums assuredly sound quite different to their first few releases, they’ve essentially been slogging away at their own kind of epic pagan/heathen blackened heavy metal (or whatever the hell you insist on labeling it) all along. The only real difference is that the band sounds more youthful and eclectic on their earlier stuff and more learned and, for lack of a not so clichéd adjective, ‘mature’, on their later shit. There never really was that transitional album that you might expect, but rather a continuous development throughout their career that fleshes out and expands on the sound that the band has always stood behind.
Primordial’s debut,
Imrama did well to carve out an identity for the band, but
A Journey’s End is already quite a leap forward. While
Imrama is an impressive debut by all accounts, in some cases it seemed that the execution didn’t always match the ambition, and that’s where
A Journey’s End gleams: each song is a fully realized entity, and the whole of the album is much more coherent. Take a song like Autumn’s Ablaze. This is absolutely one of my personal favourite Primordial songs, and serves as a wonderful representation for this album, with its darkly tranquil melodies juxtaposed with the rough harshness of Primordial’s black metal roots, and hauntingly passionate vocals. The songwriting itself is undeniably leaps and bounds ahead of the debut, and while the production hasn’t hugely changed, the shifts between extremity and tranquility are infinitely more seamless. The lyrics muse upon the inherent sense of death in the natural (inevitable) changing of seasons, and use this imagery as a backdrop for a larger theme of personal loss:
The private moments of man
Are rarely ever seen
Yet, autumn gathers me up
And sheds me in her leaves.
This theme of reflection upon the unattainable, the futility of certain pursuits, is basically what characterizes this album more than anything else unique to Primordial’s catalogue, since it’s little more than varying themes that separate the band’s albums from each other. Autumn’s Ablaze also serves as a blueprint for the Primordial classic. Think about your favourite Primordial song. Does it have an epic build up? Probably. Does it have shifting vocals styles, the most memorable of which is thunderous wailing (often but not always in the form of a chorus)? Check. Very catchy melodies masked by a gruff production? Yup, this is chiefly Primordial’s tried and true formula in all its glory. But wait! This isn’t the only good song on the album. The title track, sticking to a similar mould, is unsurprisingly another triumphant success. While Nemtheanga’s immense vocal range would be better showcased on later albums, Solitary Mourner remains his most intimate, emotional vocal performance, and it’s quite an uncomfortable song to listen to, not in a bad way, but more of a listen-to-what-the-fuck-this-guy’s-saying-because-it-sounds-like-he’s-about-to-kill-himself kind of a way.
A Journey’s End fits wonderfully into the context of Primordial’s career. It probably comes off as their “softest” album, though I can’t really put my finger on why. I always think of it as an exceptionally melancholic doom album, but whenever I listen to it I’m surprised that much of it is at least as aggressive as the debut, with Bitter Harvest being one of their most extreme moments ever. Despite this, the atmosphere conveyed is rather dreamlike, and indeed this album boasts some of Primordial’s catchiest songwriting coupled with their tasteful use of repetition. With their second album, it was probably the common expectation for Primordial to return with an even more blistering and fierce interpretation of their debut, but instead they opted to turn inwardly for inspiration. This just goes to show that even in their younger days, Primordial have always been an incredibly professional band.
Sample: youtube.com/watch?v=-ve5fUdt0rs&list=RD-ve5fUdt0rs&start_radio=1
