16.6 (Before The Devil Knows You're Dead)

Album review

After the stylistically diverse and not universally well-received New Religion, German power metallers Primal Fear had some ground to make up with longtime fans. They tried on this album, but in their quest to move away from the core power metal audience and cross over to the mainstream, they kept doing weird things like throwing Indian percussion into "Black Rain," attempting industrial rock on "Soar," and recording terrible, almost J-pop ballads ("No Smoke Without Fire," "Hands of Time"). The typically Primal Fear-ish songs are thus broken up by ill-conceived experiments that sap the album's momentum. Vocalist Ralf Scheepers still sounds like Judas Priest's Rob Halford some of the time, but too often he winds up closer to Disturbed's David Draiman. And frankly, the band's guitar tone is so blatantly indebted to Priest that it's hard to believe the British group hasn't filed a cease-and-desist lawsuit by now. Ultimately, this is about half a Primal Fear album; there are some good, fist-pumping songs, but they're islands popping out of a stagnant lagoon of bad ideas.

© Phil Freeman /TiVo