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Exile Amongst the Ruins is Primordial's ninth album in their 27 year career. Sharpening with black metal menace the epic melancholy they share with Solstice and Darkest Era, they've carved a unqiue niche in metal. Their morose grandness, though similar to their moody brethren, draws from different parts of the metal canon. The band weaves an ebb and flow of emotion but, unlike the guitar driven attack of Solstice and Darkest Era, all serves A. A. Nemtheanga's powerful vocals.
He is a singular vocal force falling almost in the middle of the metal vocal spectrum. He sings powerfully, melodically, and sounds like he could front every band from power metal to black metal. On Exile Amongst the Ruins, his full range is on display, from blackened rasps, through a cavernous bellow and a heavy dose of his trademark melodic grit.
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| Primordial 2016. Photos by Pedro Roque. |
Though the songs feature driving riffs, pummeling rhythms, and great guitar leads, everything feels like it's feeding and supporting the vocals, building epic crescendos for Nemtheanga that are as likely to build through an entire track as break into a riff, solo, or fill. Tracks mostly stick to Primordial's formula but show surprising range exemplified by the first two tracks and their placement on the album. "Nail Their Tongues" is latter day Primordial at their most metal, building a simple guitar line into a fierce riff backed by blast beats, tremolo picking and Nemtheanga's fiercest vocals on the album. It's immediately followed by the post-punk inflected "To Hell or the Hangman", one of the album's standout tracks.
Though the songs vary, the core Primordial sound never gets lost. This can come off as lack of variation when not giving the album careful attention, but devoted listens to Primordial's marching, brooding hymns to history reward with layers easily missed. Primordial's sound is so their own, so completely owned, and Exile Amongst the Ruins delivers another grand foray into it.
