Primal Fear - Devil's Ground

That familiar high pitched squeal of Ralf Halford, I mean Scheepers, at the start of opener "Metal is Forever" is total Judas Priest worship. More than any other band, Germany's Primal Fear have built a career spanning five albums and counting by using Priest as their primary influence. Scheepers is a dead ringer for Halford and was once a frontrunner as his replacement in Priest before they decided on Ripper Owens. Devils Ground is their fifth studio album since 1998, but they have yet to top that self titled debut. Sure, Jaws of Death, Nuclear Fire, and Black Sun had a couple of great songs, but always half the album was filler. The same can basically be said about Devils Ground as well. It's not bad, but Primal Fear show no desire for branching out and they just aren't writing unforgettable songs that often.

Joining Scheepers, bassist Mat Sinner (Sinner), Tom Naumann, and Stefan Leibing this time is new drummer Randy Black (Annihilator). There are some classic metal guitar riffs here ("Scared Illusion") and Scheepers is a phenomenal singer with awesome range- although he is prone to sounding emotionless at times, and there are some excellent songs ("Visions of Fate"), but it appears that Primal Fear formula is becoming more bland that ever. Since it takes Judas Priest so long to put out albums (it's now fourteen years since Halford was last in the studio with Priest and there are only two Ripper Owens releases), I guess Primal Fear is doing the job by filling the void, but even Priest tried (and sometimes failed) to do something different time to time.