Metal Storm logo
Primordial - Where Greater Men Have Fallen review




Bandcamp music player
Reviewer:
9.0

281 users:
8.12
Band: Primordial
Album: Where Greater Men Have Fallen
Release date: November 2014


01. Where Greater Men Have Fallen
02. Babel's Tower
03. Come The Flood
04. The Seed Of Tyrants
05. Ghosts Of The Charnel House
06. The Alchemist's Head
07. Born To Night
08. Wield Lightning To Split The Sun

Primordial once more return to power with the somber grandeur that has served them so well these many years. Most bands tend to attract some kind of criticism for returning to the same sound from album to album without exploring it further or evolving it to any meaningful degree, but few bands have ever crafted a style as unfathomably deep and rich in texture as Primordial; Where Greater Men Have Fallen soars beyond the reach of such petty and feeble barbs.

Where Greater Men Have Fallen carries on Primordial's roundabout way of accruing a Celtic aura - not drawing explicitly from their native musical traditions, but nonetheless steeped in antediluvian earthiness that ties them inextricably to the folk aesthetic. Primordial stands like a weatherbeaten mountain: wind-whipped raw and trodden by countless eons' worth of pilgrims, serving as a focal point for the energy that connects man to nature. Nemtheanga's haggard, prophetic voice roars across the stormy tempest of rainswept riffs and howls with bleak emotion; his wretched cries become especially powerful on the emotional "Babel's Tower."

As it happens, Where Greater Men Have Fallen does play host to a new sort of Primordial song, in the form of the thoroughly doom-laden "Ghosts Of The Charnel House." If anything, this magnificent track sounds as though it belongs with Nemtheanga's and Sol Dubh's new project, Dread Sovereign, and I can easily hear them howling "Cathars To Their Doom" alongside it. But for the most part, this album is the same band that brought us To The Nameless Dead and The Gathering Wilderness. From the voluminously grim churning of the title track to the tense, ominous buildup that consumes nearly half of "Born To Night," the blackened vastness of their sound crashes like an endless wave of archaic force.

It would be putridly crass of me to describe such a dramatic, multifaceted work of art as "kickass," but Where Greater Men Have Fallen totally kicks ass, lads. I have found it both more readily accessible and more powerful than its predecessor, Redemption At The Puritan's Hand, but pitting Primordial albums against each other seems like splitting hairs to the most pointless degree. This latest masterpiece finds the Irish masters of sobering epics firmly-ensconced in their home turf, and as always, after the album ends the Earth feels about a thousand years older.


Rating breakdown
Performance: 10
Songwriting: 9
Originality: 9
Production: 9





Written on 02.06.2015 by I'm the reviewer, and that means my opinion is correct.

Guest review by
Netzach
Rating:
9.0
If someone were to ask me a "yes-or-no" question such as: "Do you think this is their most accomplished album yet?" my answer would be "yes or no," because such a question simply cannot be answered with a single yes or no. However, would the question be rephrased as: "Did the latest Primordial album fulfill your expectations?" my answer would be a definite "no," whereas the question "Did you enjoy latest Primordial album more than any other Primordial album?" would yield an instant "yes." Did this introduction confuse you? Did I confuse myself? Yes and no.

Read more ››
published 17.04.2015 | Comments (5)

Guest review by
The_Hellion
Rating:
9.2
Where Greater Men Have Fallen is the type of album that gets better and better with every song. By this I also mean that the first song doesn't manage to catch your, or at least my, full attention (one would assume the very first song should give us an overview of the entire work, which is not the case here). If I had to go with the first impression of the first and second songs, I probably would have stopped listening to this. Luckily for me, I'm a freak, and for some reason I can't just drop an album and not finish it.

Read more ››
published 09.10.2019 | Comments (1)


Comments

Comments: 9   Visited by: 352 users
02.06.2015 - 04:52
Maco
Pvt Funderground
I think Babel's Tower is the first song from this band that has a solo, I'm not sure. Anyway, the song and the whole album were great and this review was spot on.
----
Crackhead Megadeth reigns supreme.
Loading...
02.06.2015 - 09:02
Joe Zombie

Better than the last album, but didn't give me goosebumps like Nameless Dead or Gathering Wilderness. Still a solid record.
Loading...
02.06.2015 - 10:11
Rating: 7
Daniell
_爱情_
I second my predecessor - it's a step up from Redemption, but it's nowhere near the quality of Nameless Dead or Wilderness. The band seems to have lost something after nameless. I can't really say what, but I feel that it's missing.

There are songs on this album that are simply boring and I skip them halfway through. How does one make an 8 minute song without ANY variety in it? Promordial know how to do that. 7 is the highest I can go here.
Loading...
02.06.2015 - 11:23
Rating: 7
Dark Cornatus
Powerslave
I found it pretty underwhelming though still decent. A 7 from me, on par with previous album.
Loading...
02.06.2015 - 12:56
Bad English
Tage Westerlund
I thought same about sound, but spin this 2 times and it became awesome. good album. sound don't matter now
----
Life is to short for LOVE, there is many great things to do online !!!

Stormtroopers of Death - ''Speak English or Die''
apos;'
[image]
I better die, because I never will learn speek english, so I choose dieing
Loading...
02.06.2015 - 18:06
Rating: 9
Netzach
Planewalker
Agree completely, they really nailed it this time.
Loading...
02.06.2015 - 18:52
Enemy of Reality
Account deleted
Written by Joe Zombie on 02.06.2015 at 09:02

Better than the last album, but didn't give me goosebumps like Nameless Dead or Gathering Wilderness. Still a solid record.


Pretty much this. I enjoyed the previous album, but this one has more stand out songs. But it doesn't reach the brilliance of TTND, AJE or TGW. I'd put it at the same level as STEA.

"Ghosts of the Charnel House" is the best song My Dying Bride didn't write since "The Dreadful Hours" era.
Loading...
02.06.2015 - 21:20
Rating: 6
ErikBraun

I must be missing something here. I don't love this.
Loading...
08.02.2017 - 15:34
Heartshorm
Account deleted
Waiting for their concert at Moscow
Loading...

Hits total: 6710 | This month: 7