I haven't paid attention to Germany's Primal Fear since 2001's "Nuclear Fire" (which contained the band's absolute finest work to date, a true masterpiece by the name of "Iron Fist in a Velvet Glove"), but I picked this up for the hell of it and hot damn is it a good fucking metal record. Do they still try pretty hard to sound like Judas Priest circa "Painkiller"? You bet your ass they do! But this thing sounds great and the songs are generally well written. Okay, sure, the drums are a little rigid and flimsy, and the bass isn't that audible, but the guitars and vocals sound awesome, so aside from tweaking the mix I wouldn't really screw with anything. And yeah, this is kind of cheesy, and no one really needs 56 minutes of this stuff, they could've shaved off a few of the goofier tracks (opener "Metal is Forever", for one), but some of the choruses in these songs are fucking catchy as hell! "Suicide and Mania", "Visions of Fate", "Colony"... it's all fistbanging mania, baby. Sign me up! There are even some slightly slower and more emphatic tracks like "The Healer" and "Wings of Desire", employing clean guitars and some fucking ridiculous vocal harmonies (in a good way) - still keeping things pretty powerful. "Sea of Flames" is practically lifted from combined riffs off of "Painkiller", but for a record being released in 2004 I can certainly live with that. As with every Primal Fear layout there are silly metallic birds all over the place with some well handled yet still expectedly cheesy artwork and tons of laughable band photos. As a whole the layout looks pretty bad, but at least the cover art is presentable, so fuck it. I don't even care about the lyrics, shit, there's a cong called "In Metal", the aforementioned opening track is called "Metal is Forever"... do the math. But fuck it, this is good stuff. Fucking full blown metal with no god damn regrets. Fans of total 80's power metal and of course Judas Priest's "Painkiller" should totally appreciate this band. It ain't original, but they're good at what they do, and they've gotta be dedicated to shit to have dropped five albums' worth in the last five years!
[Nuclear Blast]
Running time - 56:07, Tracks: 12
[Notable tracks: Suicide and Mania, Visions of Fate, Sacred Illusion, Colony]
Primal Fear - http://www.primalfear.de
