Review:
Torsion riffing tears apart the core of isolation in this hardcore/metal crossover work that narrowly slides into the genre of thrash with its unrelenting rhythm and broken, conflicting themes resolving into ambient droning choruses of irrefutable, even tone progressions.
With a shouted resource of violence for a vocal track punching into the ample rhythmic solitude of even and undergrooved but engaging tempo regulation, Prong forge ahead with noisy and dissonant punk that manages nevertheless to reach out with heavy metal hooks and the evenhanded melodic breakdown that bands like Black Sabbath defined as the sound of nihilistic, oppositional music. The well-handled pocket drumming and bass interplay that in radio or stadium rock became tedium here holds ground in its pensive storage of emotion.
For hardcore then or now, this album provides lessons in song structure and melody, with a savagery that has disappeared in the benevolent wave of post-PC hardcore that makes the current crop disappear. With its articulate use of harmonic dissonance as well as pure rhythm, and its gratifying indulgence in intelligent interpretations of hardcore canon, "Primitive Origins" forges an anthemic statement of isolation deconstructed with the logic of nothingness.
