Ah lads, it’s happening again.  Dublin’s finest has always been known, over their enormous thirty two year career, for their consistency, but even so, it’s been five years since we’ve heard anything from Primordial.  With a tenure that long and a career chock full of highlights, it’s not hard to see why they are at the forefront of the Irish metal scene, torchbearers for the next generation of up and coming firebrands.  Clearly, Primordial have a lot left to say, and How It Ends ironically spells only the beginning for a new decade of the band in action.

“The title is a question: is this how it ends?  How it all goes down: culture, language, history, society, humanity; who knows?,” says vocalist A. A. Nemtheanga.  In the five years since Exile Amongst the Ruins, many wondered if the same question could be asked of Primordial.  While the album was excellent, not much stirred in their camp beyond its release.  Obviously global pandemics notwithstanding, it was not a farfetched idea that perhaps there would be no next Primordial album, that they had said everything they needed to say.  That certainly isn’t the case, and although recording How It Ends didn’t begin in earnest until about a year ago, the seeds of lyrical and musical ideas stretch back a long way.  “If, for example, To The Nameless Dead was about the movement of borders, building of nations and those sent to war who gave their lives forming them, then this is the album more about resisting those empires, the freedom fighters, the outlaws, the people who made suicidal stands for freedom of speech, or independence,” says Nemtheanga.  

As far as Primordial albums go, this sure is one.  Of course, I don’t mean that as a bad thing.  The band themselves even admits that “[How It Ends] certainly sounds like Primordial, there is no doubt about that; we have our own style and this is a new chapter of the same book.  If we have done anything new it’s really to work with more conviction than ever, and trust more than ever our instincts.”  And their instincts are good, folks.  This is a much darker and more aggressive album than they have recently made.  It lacks not, though, the epic, soaring nature of the guitar melodies and Nemtheanga’s signature theatrical barks and howls.  They really do have a singular style they have perfected, and time has shown them to be in class and even genre of their own.  Are the arpeggiated chords that open “Pilgrimage to the World’s End” folk metal?  Maybe, but then you might have to call Wayfarer folk metal too, and that doesn’t seem quite fitting.  Are the crunchy riffs that make up the main motif of “Nothing New Under the Sun” post-metal?  Perhaps it would be easy to lump them in there, but there is something more to be said for how the song builds and grows.  Is the outright aggression of the title track black metal?  People seem to lump them in as a black metal band, but at this rate it’s more accurate to just say they are Primordial and be done with it.  A track like “Victory Has 1000 Fathers, Defeat is an Orphan” or “Call to Cernunnos” is so steeped in snot-nosed Irish defiance and rousing, righteous hooks that it wouldn’t be fair to try to pigeon-hole it in a box.  It can only be one thing, and we would expect no less from Primordial at this stage in the game.  It perfectly nails the blend of Irish melodies and dark, gruff aggression that they set out for.

It’s a tricky thing, to stay relevant and feel like you still have something to say when you have been in the metal scene for over three decades.  Fortunately, the state of the world is the gift that just keeps on giving when it comes to stuff to be pissed off about, so it seems we may never actually see how it ends for Primordial.  And I don’t want to.  How it Ends captures the urgency and grandeur of that rebellious Irish spirit that has always run through Primordial’s music, and perhaps ascends it to a level fitting of the year 2023.

— Ian

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How It Ends is available now on Metal Blade Records.  For more information on Primordial, visit their official website.