Redemption at the Puritan's Hand

Lyricist: A.A. Nemtheanga.
Personnel: A.A. Nemtheanga (vocals); Ciarán Macuilliam, Michael O'Floinn (guitar); Simon O'Laoghaire (drums).
Audio Mixers: Chris Fielding; A.A. Nemtheanga; Pól MacAmhlaigh.
Recording information: Foel Studio, Wales (2010).
Illustrator: Paul McCarroll.
Arranger: Primordial.
The seventh album by Irish pagan metal act Primordial is as churning and powerful as its predecessor, 2007's To the Nameless Dead. Frontman A.A. Nemtheanga has a unique voice, combining hoarse and guttural roars with a more incantatory chanting style that gives the impression of some pagan wizard calling storms to blast his tribe's enemies off an ancient battlefield. The songs are all built from the same basic ingredients -- guitars that ring out in a folk metal style before transforming into a black/death churn, and drums that thunder forward more like tribal percussion or war drums than typical metal blastbeats. This gives their music a lot more epic power than most black or death metal groups, but it also makes their albums a little monotonous, as they really only do the one thing, and they do it over and over and over, for quite a long time. The shortest song on Redemption at the Puritan's Hand is "The Black Hundred," and it runs 6:19. Four of the album's eight tracks are over eight minutes long, and the album closer, "Death of the Gods," rumbles and roars along for a staggering 9:21. Primordial are very good at what they do, but whether the average listener -- one in search of melodies or choruses, for example -- wants to put up with it is a separate question. ~ Phil Freeman