- Country: Ireland
- Style: Pagan metal / Black metal
- Label: Metal Blade Records
- Release date: 25 November 2014
Primordial don’t really do surprises. They do weight. Eight albums in, Alan “Nemtheanga” Averill is still singing every line like the fate of a nation depends on it, and Where Greater Men Have Fallen is their heaviest, rawest record in years.
Producer Jaime Gomez Arellano gives the band a rougher, drier sound, and it suits them. The title track marches in on a slow, grinding riff and Nemtheanga’s voice cracking at the edges. “Babel’s Tower” – which also got the band’s first proper music video, believe it or not – builds its chorus out of a single, hammering chord change. “The Seed of Tyrants” is the closest they come to black metal, all tremolo and fury. And “Wield Lightning to Split the Sun” closes the album with the kind of rousing, fist-raised ending only they can do without sounding ridiculous.
It is long and occasionally monotonous, and the middle of the album could lose a few minutes. But when it connects, nothing else in metal sounds like this.
Best tracks:
Where Greater Men Have Fallen
Babel’s Tower
The Seed of Tyrants
Wield Lightning to Split the Sun
Author’s rating: 8.5/10
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