Primal Creation is a Belgian modern thrash band playing metal the way they see fit. After their awesome debut album ‘Demockracy’ was released in 2017, the band continued its way to fame. Even going so far as to play on the 30th edition of Wacken Open Air ! Throughout 2020, they recorded the follow up ‘News Feed’. With one intro and eight tracks, the album shows how the band has evolved, while staying true to their distinct style.

The album starts with a short intro. It uses dissonant musical parts, together with some samples, to set an ominous mood. But more importantly, it immediately reels you in and makes you curious as to what’s to come. All tracks are great in their own right, in a way where brutality and melodious parts complement each other. Right from their first album, Primal Creation has brought thrash metal with a special modern flavour. And this new release keeps in line with this. Nonetheless, it seems that they’ve ventured a little further away from their thrash root to explore the more progressive parts of metal.

Most of the tracks on the album tend to follow the same formula for song structure. Hard, fast paced parts and slower break parts come and go. This creates a push and pull effect and helps the vocals to come to their right. Vocalist Koen Mattheeuws switches his vocal style between an almost death sound and parts which are practically spoken. While not everyone will be a fan of this, it does create an interesting contrast between different parts of the songs. And it also helps to accentuate certain parts of the lyrics.

Towards the end of the album, the tracks end to be more of a stylistic breaking point. Songs such as ‘Follow the Reader’ and ‘Lie / Share / Subscribe’ are sometimes a little far out there. ‘Watch It Burn !’ ventures the most away from the other ones. About halfway through the song, everything comes to an abrupt end. And we have a spoken part over very rhythmic drums while the guitars play a slow melody. I get the point of this, they want to draw more attention to the message of the lyrics. But to me, this part breaks the vibe of the rest of the song. To each their own taste though. And this part does launch really well in the last part of the track.

The final track also makes use of this type of spoken part. However after the intro, they go right back into their fast riffs. And in the end, the album draws to a close with maybe the best solo and harmony work it has to offer. All in all, if you’re already familiar with Primal Creation and liked their earlier work, you’re sure to enjoy this. If you don’t know them, be sure to give it a chance. You might be surprised by what you encounter.

Release date : April 16th, 2021
Label : independent
Tracklist :

1. Extremely Dangerous
2. A Post-truth Order
3. Please Disperse
4. Vial Play
5. Antillectual Disease
6. Follow the Reader
7. Watch It Burn!
8. Lie / Share / Subscribe
9. The Daily Noose