Description

Double album on black vinyls with gatefold cover

This is, perhaps, Primordial’s greatest moment. Gods To The Godless opens with two strong renditions of “Gods To The Godless,” a perennial fan favorite, and “Babels Tower,” a new song. But when the third song kicks in, “Where Greater Men Have Fallen,” this album takes on a whole new brutality as the deep, rolling, world-crunching cords of the song’s opening kicks in. And it never lets up from there. If you know Primordial’s music, it would be hard to think of a better progression from there than what happens: “No Grave Deep Enough” followed by “As Rome Burns.” In addition to the outright brutality, there is one very thoughtful and contemplative moment with “Wield Lightning To Split The Sun.” This is followed by “Empire Falls” with one of the band’s most defining and rousing choruses: “Where is the fighting man? Am I he?” and the prophetic, judgmental lines that follow it: “You would trade every truth for hollow victories.” They have chosen a great song list; about 2/3 from their last two albums and 1/3 from prior albums. But I am not exaggerating when I say that this is one of the best live albums I own. Turn this one all the way up and there are few better. Somehow the louder, the more unbelievable with this one. The band claims there are no overdubs or post-production fixes of any sort, and though there are a few blips (Alan misses the beginning of a song, forcing the band to keep playing a few bars longer than they needed to for him to come back in at the right spot, for instance), this rivals anything they’ve done. They hit a brutality that has yet to be captured on their previous albums. Alan brings back some of the early demonic death-pagan vocals from the original days of the band, and when the band does “Heathen Tribes,” they blend those younger, unrestrained moments very well into the new material; new listeners probably won’t miss a beat and never realize they have just been taken back to an earlier era.

Track list:
1. Gods To The Godless
2. Babels Tower
3. Where Greater Men Have Fallen
4. No Grave Deep Enough
5. As Rome Burns
6. The Alchemists Head
7. Bloodied Yet Unbowed
8. The Coffin Ships
9. Heathen Tribes
10. Wield Lightning To Split The Sun
11. Empire Falls