Primalfrost
Lost Elegies

Canadian Primalfrost that is a one-man band by Dean Arnold has two major problems to get over; to be noticed in an already overcrowded genre and overcome the problems that one-man bands usually have. Arnold founded Primalfrost in 2012 when he was only fifteen years old, and he released a debut album in 2014. This is the second album, and I read in the press material that the first was quite well received. Does that mean this is a good one? Yrlund’s cover looks great, like his artworks usually does, the insides are another matter.

It is melodic death metal, quite typical in style. There are 46 minutes of music with no surprises, and no original ideas. The production isn’t quite top-notch, but probably good enough to get away with. The song selection and variation are about the same as we usually find within this genre, the vocals are quite poor. I would say that there isn’t much, if anything, that sets this album apart from everything else in the genre. I find myself wondering if a lack of feedback that can be the case when you are a one-man project is the reason for this album being a bit generic. If there were more people in the band, they might have pointed out to Dave that listening to this album doesn’t really do anything – it is just white noise.

I wouldn’t select this one over other album in this genre, there are some real highlights there and this album doesn’t even have a great song. It is not awful or anything, just indifferent and dull. Arnold falls into the same traps as many one-man projects, and many other bands as well; he wants to make the same as the stuff he likes. But doing the same stuff just makes you irrelevant, people tend to like the originals more than the followers, no matter if the followers are better. So, I cannot see why anyone would want to listen to this album, I have a hard time even caring to listen as the songs don’t want to grab my attention, it is like Arnold doesn’t want me to listen to his work.

I recommend looking at something else, there are some great bands in the melodic death metal genre, Primalfrost is not one of them. Perhaps Arnold should enlist either some bandmembers or some people to give him feedback for the next album, had he had such assistance there is a high likelihood that they would have told him that this album is quite flat, derivative, and boring – it is never easy to objectively review your own work, it is almost impossible. That is probably why Primalfrost gives us a rather dreary album.

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