Venom Prison – Primeval (Review)

After Animus (2016) and Samsara (2019), Venom Prison open the gates to their newest release Primeval (2020).

While their first two releases, in my opinion, have a bigger focus on the aspect of heaviness/extremity, Primeval offers a view on the whole wide range of what Venom Prison is capable of in 2020. Sure – there are quite a lot of strong bands in heavy/extreme music these days but to me, Venom Prison are even able to relocate the boundaries of modern Death Metal with this release. Having said this, their recent signing to Century Media doesn’t come surprisingly.

It is hard to make recommendations for specific songs on Primeval because to me, the album works best as a whole, the arrangement of the songs seems to be well thought through. I’ve already mentioned the wide range of Extreme Metal Venom Prison offers here, there are aspects of Deathcore (for example “Usurper of the Throne”, “Life Suffer”, “Mortal Abomination”), much modern Death Metal (for example “Babylon the Whore”, “Narcotic”), a mixture of both (“The Primal Chaos”) and influences of Grindcore (“Defiant to the Will of God”).

Much more important than the different genres of extreme music, Primeval contains and the pigeonholing that comes with it is the really high musical quality of this album. To me, the best example to emphasize the musical quality and variety of Primeval in a single song is “Slayer of Holofernes”.

To sum up, Primeval is a great and totally recommendable album full of varying heaviness and musical greatness. To me, there’s no way around Venom Prison and Primeval when it comes to modern Death Metal / Extreme Metal.

8,5/ 10

Favorite Tracks:
“Slayer of Holofernes”
“The Primal Chaos”

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