vote
5.5
- Band:
Purified in Blood - Duration: 00:49:42
- Available from: 03/14/2025
- Label:
-
Indie recordings
Streaming not yet available
After more than a decade of record silence, the Purified Norwegians in Blood return with “Primal Pulse Thunder”, a job that marks further transformation in their often fragmented artistic path. The energy and the youth fury of the beginnings in the name of a European metalcore, often and willingly veined with Thrash Metal, are now a really distant memory: for some time those solutions have left room for a more compassionate approach, characterized by a greedy and dense sound, intent on moving between different influences in the difficult search for a well -recognizable identity.
As had been for the previous “Flight of a Dying Sun”, today the focus is clearly moved towards more cadenced and heavy sounds. The influences of the Gojira are evident in the deep riffs and in the numerous moments in which the sound power is built on massive grooves rather than on more lively and intricate rhythmic textures. The result is an album that often transmits a sense of weighting, where speed gives way to a laborious, almost reflective incede. In this sense, in some passages there is a certain tendency to slow down further, even touching sludge and post-metal territories. The band therefore seems to want to explore more atmospheric dimensions, without however never going completely towards cathartic drifts. The use of low -pounded and rhythmic guitaries particularly spread to create a sense of threatening immobility, as if the music was loaded with tension without ever granting a real liberating explosion. A choice that sometimes penalizes the overall dynamism of the album, making some episodes excessively monolithic.
There is no shortage, however, break in which the band dusts off its most ferocious tradition in a certain sense: you do not look here at the imprint of the beginning, but we allow ourselves to the accelerations that seem to recall the Norwegian black metal. This is the case, for example, of a piece like the final “portal”, a long and gloomy composition, which in its ending launches into a ride, as if to break the blanket of gravity that pervades the disc.
In general, “Primal Pulse Thunder” seems to express a strong feeling of introspection and comparison with the passage of time, an element that transpires in the mood of these compositions, almost always very, too controlled. The songs often develop in a circular way, insisting on obsessive patterns that emphasize a sense of inevitability and forfeiture. This, however, also has its reverse of the medal: the album ends irreparably to be a little repetitive, in offering a few truly memorable melodies or riffs. Despite the solidity of the production and the undoubted executive quality, the work in short seems to disperse in various directions, delivering us a band once a piece of arrogant and which now seems to have become thoughtful, undecided, almost afflicted by the passage of time and by the increasingly marked distance from one's youth.
Despite being derivative, you work such as “Last Leaves of a Poisoned Tree” or “Reaper of Souls” were more sparkling and fun listening, while “Primal Pulse Thunder”, without it is of great flickers, risks taping the listener in the long run, suffocated by his own weight.
Daniel D`Amico for SANREMO.FM
