Hot on the heels of their collaborative album-length EP release with PIG, industrial supergroup Primitive Race serve up their debut album proper. What’s immediately striking is just how restrained and outright tuneful it is.
It’s extremely refreshing: while so many acts – vintage and less so – are content to plug away at the old technoindustrial tropes, merging aggrotech bass and beats to gritty, metallic guitars and finishing it all off with mangled, processed vocals, Primitive Race have placed their primary emphasis on songs.
That isn’t to say this album lacks bite, or balls, or edge, and if anything, the subtlety and nuance, the attention to detail intensifies the rage that permeates the album. Lyrically, Primitive Race follow the popular genre trajectory of accessibly rhyming lyrics, but they’re articulate and at times inventive.
The pulsating dance of ‘So Strange’ powers a strong, hooky start to the album, but it’s by no means a template. Elements of Killing Joke are as prevalent as those of the likes of Skinny Puppy The industrial metal stomp of ‘Acceptance of Reality’ leans toward nu-metal, but succeeds because it’s articulate, both musically and lyrically, and distils the anger to pure energy.
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It’s the gothy slant of tracks like ‘Addict Now’ and ‘Give Up the Ghost’ which really stands out, with glacial synths and insistent mechanised rhythms bathed in heavy washes of reverb and coupled with fractal guitar lines harking back to the days of post-punk at its peak..
The roaring swagger of ‘Cage Rattler’ is their own ‘Personal Jesus’, but it packs the grind of Marilyn Manson, coupled with the grime of, say, Morning Glories, and the explosive racket of Gallon Drunk.
‘Taking Things Back’ is ostensibly a pop song, albeit in the vein of ‘PHM’ era NIN. It’s taut, dynamic and precise, a fist-pumping anthem, and if the bouncing Europop of ‘DJFH’ is rather flimsy and had a whiff of cheese, it’s compensated tenfold by the majestic closer, ‘Below Zero’, which is the very definition of ‘epic’ and a perfect finale to an album that’s considered, crafted, diverse and balanced.
Primitive Race Online
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