It's hard for me to believe it's been more than 20 years since the heyday of Nuclear Fire and Black Sun. Primal Fear have kept on releasing albums, some good, some not so good. I notice that I have often given good scores to their albums, but I often don't remember much about them. They always have a lot of polish and a good sound, and that can cover up songwriting that is less than memorable.

But I have not heard Primal Fear this on the game in years. This is Priest worship like they have always done to one degree or another—the riffs are sharp, the production is glossy, and Ralph still sounds amazing. They have backed way off on the multitracking on the vocals, so you can actually hear him sing. One thing I noticed about this album is that they put a lot of work into making memorable choruses, which has often been a weakness of this band. Lots of times on old albums, the riffs were good, but the melodies on the choruses were just meh. This time, you will be singing along to tracks like the kickass opener "The Hunter" before the song is half over.

The first five tracks here made me think this was going to be a classic, but as always on a Primal Fear album, they overdid the track list a bit. There are definitely weaker songs here that could have been cut, and we'd have a much stronger 10-track album instead of 13. "Destroyer," "Far Away," "Tears of Fire," and "Crossfire" are all first-rate cuts that will have you throwing the fucking horns. But then you get tracks like "Heroes and Gods" or "March Boy March" that are not very good and could have been left off. Like, cut those, leave off "A Tune I Won't Forget" and close out on the stomping riffs of "The Dead Don't Die"—there, almost a perfect album.

There has been some press over new guitarist Thal"a Bellazecca, a YouTuber and Twitch personality known for her music content, and she certainly doesn't seem like what you'd expect (she wasn't even a year old when Nuclear Fire was released), but she can fucking play, and getting her in the band will expose them to her entire audience. It's a smart move, and you know fucking Matt Sinner isn't going to have someone in the band if they can't cut it, no matter how many followers she has.

So this is legit the best Primal Fear album in years, with catchier songs that I find myself singing at all hours, and I keep coming back to it. Weak spots and all, this is a definite career highlight for them and shows they still have it in them to make genuinely great music.