From the first moments there can be no doubt as to who’s swinging the weapons here: the Irish Primordial let go their inimitable, humming, growling steamroller sound. Truly a powerful storm... Singer Alan Nemtheanga implores the inner heathen strength of his audience to rise against the soft, but numbing cocoon of modern civilisation, and in doing so the band do justice to their name - “primordial”, primeval, earthly and as raw as the forces of nature, the monolithic riffs claw their way into the hearts of the listener. In contrast the previous album, ‘Spirit the Earth Aflame’, Primordial solely reach to the tonal treasures of their homeland in the fragile, acoustic interludes, which as the album title suggests, fill the calm with spiritual content. Otherwise, this album seems to be more heavily influenced by Bathory in their Viking phase, than ever before, only colder and more ominous. And as with all of the Irish band’s earlier albums, this masterpiece is miserly in terms of grandiose highlights, with less than seven songs all told - on top of which, some riffs often repeat themselves throughout the overlong epics to the outer limits of the bearable. Yet it’s just this barrenness, that makes ‘Storm Before Calm’ so stirring. And so I bow down before this before this album and realise yet again that some musicians can do no wrong. Primordial clearly belong to the latter. It’s clear that we are dealing with a band that is, pure and simply, unique. (Graded 7/7)

Robert Müller