Colombian band Primal Sinner offer up a highly tuned, thrilling metal sound built on the principles and techniques of classical music and they describe as “strength, beauty and poetics.”
The band was founded by brothers Jhon and Fabian Tejada, who are professionally trained in classical music theory and composition and are committed to producing music that meets international standards by working with world-renowned engineers. With compositions complete for their debut album, Dying Like the Sun in the West (2019), the brothers, who both play the guitar, onboarded vocalist Dio López, bassist Freddie Zambrano and drummer Freddy Olave, and continue to evolve their artistic vision and production standards.
On the sound they’ve crafted, Jhon told us: “We’re swimming against the tide by balancing two worlds that have been in conflict for a very long time: modern power and audiophile detail. The former was largely achieved in the mixing, thanks to contemporary metal master Jens Bogren, and the latter mainly in the mastering, thanks to all-time audiophile eminence Bob Katz. Although both elements must be sufficiently present during the recording phase in the first place.”
He also explained the band’s approach to crafting a dramatic metal and rock style, telling us: “This implies a wide palette of expression rooted in a set of polar opposites, such as: slow/fast, quiet/loud, clean/distorted, dark/bright, and a lot of other polarities that are handled dialectically, developing within a narrative structure similar to that of films and novels. This approach carefully builds tension towards a climax, leading the audience through a journey that simultaneously engages the various faculties of their being – perception, emotion, thought etc… – and leaves them with the sense of having witnessed a small but significant fragment of the human condition. The literary component is essential here, but the instrumental part of the work should be able to ‘tell a story’ by itself, much like classical composers did during the Romantic period, and what we’re striving to do in popular music.”
Our latest taste of this is Oedipus, which was released last week. The six-and-a-half-minute track opens up with dramatic stabs of guitar and drums, which intersect with atmospheric vocals and piano. The intensity builds with drawn-out guitars and powerful vocals, building up to more stabbing guitars and giving way to a little guitar lick. Dramatic vocals take over, before heavier guitars build the intensity and flow into a powerful chorus. That gives way to a cool dual guitar lick, which drops into light guitars and drums before stabbing guitars return as the atmosphere builds. A brief pause tees up an almighty blast of intense vocals over a mass of guitars and pounding drums, dropping into a final blast of the chorus.
On the track, Jhon said: “I would say it’s a unique experience of the myth, from an existentialist perspective and within the aesthetic framework of metal and rock.”
That’s the first single from Primal Sinner’s second album DRÂMA, which will be released in five phases throughout the rest of the year. On the album, Jhon told us: “For those who followed our debut, the short answer is more: we greatly expanded our artistic proposal with more instruments, voices and sounds; more tempos, dynamics and styles; more topics, emotions and creativity. For the new listeners: DRÂMA is a semi-conceptual album that, according to an eminence like Bob Katz, ‘excels in performance, variety, versatility and sound,’ a mature work where a band finally found their own voice. THIS is Primal Sinner.”
The Primal Sinner sound draws influence from classic rock and metal icons like Metallica, Iron Maiden, Dio and Pink Floyd, as well as classical composers like Beethoven. Their diverse influences also draw on everything from modern metal bands like Linkin Park through to the likes of Lana del Rey, Depeche Mode, Hans Zimmer, Dark Tranquillity, The Gathering and Portishead.
And on what inspires them to write music, Jhon explains: “The human condition, especially its inherent tragedy. Everything that threatens life, such as mortality, suffering, evil, injustice, and the struggles to overcome them, through freedom, truth, goodness, beauty. We’ve been influenced by Jung’s psychology, nihilist and existentialist philosophy, and novelists like Sabato and Saramago, among others.”
And, having been to Colombia and struggled to find signs of a rock and metal scene, we asked the band for their insights into their local scene. Jhon told us: “Colombian music is underrated: bands like Kraken, Masacre, Legend Maker (among others) deserve more recognition and opportunities. Promising projects are aborted early on due to a lack of family support, which is disheartening: talent is a gift that should not be wasted. There are important festivals here, but a broader ecosystem that allows bands to endure is non-existent: it’s extremely difficult for people in this country to dedicate themselves fully to art. At some point, they have to choose between it or ‘life.'”
Primal Sinner’s new album DRÂMA will be released in several phases throughout the year, and the band will be announcing live shows in due course.
You can follow Primal Sinner on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, and check out their music on Spotify, Apple Music and YouTube.
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