Primal Fear - Best Of Fear

Published November 9 2017

*=Staff's pick

CD 1:
Area 16 (New song)
Predator (New song)*
If Looks Could Kill (New song)
Thrill Of Speed (New song)
The End Is Near
Strike
Sign Of Fear
In Metal We Trust
When Death Comes Knocking
Six Times Dead (16.6)
Angels Of Mercy
Unbreakable Part 2
Riding The Eagle
Rulebreaker
King For A Day
Bad Guys Wear Black

CD 2:
Every Time It Rains
We Walk Without Fear
Fighting The Darkness
Hands Of Time
One Night In December
The Sky Is Burning
Where Angels Die
Black Rain
Born With A Broken Heart
Born Again
The Man (That I Don't Know)

Genre	Heavy Metal	Ralf Scheepers	Vocals
Tracks	27	Tom Naumann	Guitar
Running time	140 Min.	Alex Beyrodt	Guitar
Label	Frontiers Music	Magnus Karlsson	Guitar
Release	November 10, 2017	Mat Sinner	Bass
Country	Germany	Francesco Jovino	Drums
Producer	Mat Sinner	Magnus Karlsson	Keyboards
Similar artists	---

Additional main personnel: Henny Wolter and Stefan Leibing (guitars), Randy Black (drums), Charlie Bauerfiend and Dennis Ward (production), Ralf Scheepers and Magnus Karlsson (co-production).

Primal Fear's new effort is a best of compilation that comprises 22 songs off the band's last 5 albums from 2007-2016 on Frontiers Music, as well as 4 brand new tracks. I can't say what purpose such an album has in late 2017, when pretty much everyone that's curious easily can listen to the new stuff over the web soon, but I believe from a business perspective that people would be more eager and interested in, at least to some degree, paying for a full album rather than spending their money on just a couple of new tracks and a bunch of stuff they've already heard before. The band and the record company have nevertheless decided to put this idea to existence and as usual it's debatable which songs will make the final cut and hence I have no real opinion whether they've chosen the right tracks for this thing and I will concentrate on the album's initial 4 songs instead.

Area 16 opens up this record and it is kind of a standard Primal Fear intro with mechanical sounds from some sort of synthesizer where the melody in the music for some unknown and strange reason seems insignificant and to me this piece is truly unable to build up some real excitement and anticipation for the rest of the songs and it appears to have been put on the record just to extend the number of new songs from 3 to 4. Fast forward to the next track, Predator, which definitely is a Primal Fear creation in every little detail, because even if the band has gone through some drummer changes in recent years, the drums are very much in the regular vein still and if you know this band well from past achievements you will certainly identify the basics of the main riff and the melody in both song and music.

Song number 3, If Looks Could Kill, was originally performed by Pamala Stanley in 1985 and later by Heart in 1986, which probably is the version people reading these lines recognize the most, and on here the band has, very unsurprisingly, metalized the music to adapt to the well known concept to a great extent and this one comes out pretty decent in the end, even if it's not the most fitting tune for this band to re-record, but maybe more just a song that they like and a cool thing to make an attempt to do something stellar with. The fourth and final new chapter is Thrill Of Speed and it contains pretty much the same elements as Predator does, albeit with the subtle, yet important, difference that it doesn't come out in the same great way. An okay song though, even if it without a doubt would end up on the least good half of songs on any Primal Fear record to date.

Performance	Originality	Production	Vocals	Songwriting
7	2	7	9	6

Summary
6 chalices of 10 - Tobbe