Primitai
Violence of the Skies

UK band Primitai gives us som violence of the skies when they offer us their sixth album, and it sure looks a bit violent when judging by the cover. It is renowned artist Stan W Decker that has made the cover art, the album is also mastered by well-known Alan Douches, and they have some skilled guests as well, maybe Paul Quinn of Saxon fame as the most famous one. So, I guess it has to be considered interesting from the information – but is it?

Primitai is one of those bands that looks backwards rather than forwards and if you look at the progression of a music style in terms of a sprint relay, it is like Primitai drops the baton and the race ends. They don’t come with anything new in their performance of the heavy metal genre, NWOBHM is the usual combination of letters for this style that was pioneered by the likes of Iron Maiden, Saxon, etc. Back then it was something new and fresh and that is what led to the success of Iron Maiden, they did something new and exciting, and good – Primitai mostly imitates stuff done by others before them, like so many other heavy metal bands they are merchants in déjà vu.

Violence of the Skies is a catchy and pretty entertaining album with good songs that are easy to like and pretty enjoyable overall. Valley of Darkness is the one that I like best, a kind of heavy metal stereotype and a good song. The problem is that it is not that easy to be enthusiastic about just one more of those heavy metal albums that doesn’t really offer anything that makes me raise an eyebrow, it is the same style, the same clichés – and after playing it I forget about it. The long playing time doesn’t help the album either, perhaps one or two of the songs would appear more appealing if they were less songs to compete with. I do think that they are one of the better bands in the generic heavy metal bracket but that is like saying that the common cold is caused by one of the better Coronaviruses, it doesn’t really change the fact that it is far from the best you can experience.

A decent piece of entertainment, and I don’t think many will dislike it. The real question is how many will look upon it as a piece of music history, in a way every album of course is a piece of music history but very few make a real impact. This album looks pretty good, it sounds pretty good, but it is hard to escape the fact that I have reviewed nearly 100 albums that I like a lot more than this one only in the last 15 months. And as I buy something like 10-15 albums a year nowadays this one will never be interesting in that regard.

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