25 long years ago, gangsta metal heavyweights Primer 55 brought about their unfortunately timed and curiously titled sophomore album, (The) New Release.
This was 2001, the peak of nu metal’s commercial viability, and Primer was swinging for the fences. They had established themselves the year before with their crushing debut Introduction to Mayhem, a love letter to pain and insanity that put them firmly on the hip hop-focused path alongside contemporaries like Limp Bizkit, P.O.D., and countless others. I won’t bury the lede here; Introduction is one of my favorite albums of all time, and I do like it better than the album that followed it.
Be that as it may, the fact remains that New Release is something very different, something almost impenetrable, that draws my attention and almost demands explanation. It put Primer on a brand nu path, one less travelled and harder to define, touching down at the home base of rock and metal themselves and expanding from there. In a way, the evergreen implication of the title could be considered fitting; on the other hand, maybe it's less “new” than “unimitated.”
Listeners would be hard pressed to expect this new direction upon first hearing the album’s opening track (after a short piano intro), which would also be its only single: “This Life” is a muscular, anthemic track in keeping with the new millennium’s crop of nu-infused radio rock. It moves deftly, hits hard and gets a crowd singing along.
Despite slotting into the formula for a rock hit to a degree where some might call it generic, the most notable quality of “This Life” is the preview it gives listeners of a more lyrically inclined and introspective version of the band. On Introduction, frontman Jason “J-Sin” Luttrell spit up stories of life on the streets, always punctuated by wails for violence, shoutouts to his crew and no shortage of grunted expletives to drive the point home. “This Life,” on the other hand, is a second-person address to a victim of domestic abuse, detailing the victim’s pain and detached sense of self in breathy verses and crying out for change on the chorus. It’s a surprise how authentic and affecting it comes across.
The fourth track, “Texas,” is the one to break the ice and show off the other side of New Release. It starts with a Bobby Burns guitar groove funky enough to rival the contemporary Incubus, before J-Sin kicks in for a burning sex jam for all the girls who “shake it just right.” Horns appear out of nowhere to emphasize the showiness. It’s like watching a bird do a mating dance - a really loud bird, as J-Sin still proves he could holler with the best of them. Safe to say, “Texas” marks a tonal departure from the early portion of the album.
That dissonance defines New Release; for better or for worse, this is a more sincere version of Primer, and sincerity can just as easily manifest as emotional introspection as it can horned-up crooning.
After another brief interlude, the album’s second half opens with “Lou Evil,” probably the most polarizing song offered up here, if for no other reason than being the most egregious implementation of horns. Personally, this is one of my favorites. Despite immediately shooting a hole in anyone’s case for New Release superseding Introduction as Primer’s masterpiece, the rash boldness of “Lou Evil” makes it unavoidably charming to me. It betrays a more fun version of the band that maybe, under better circumstances, could have found its place among the more colorful metal acts of our present future.
The album wraps with “All In The Family,” a demand for the loners of the world to stand up, recognize the real and be authentic – and I do mean a demand. J-Sin declares you should “slit your throat or be yourself, gotta do what you gotta do.” It’s a fittingly grim ending to the album, counterbalanced to a degree by previewing the “family” theme would later adopt under the phrase “Family For Life,” the title of their 2007 EP and sort of a slogan that calls on fans to join the fray through to the band’s present iteration.
One thing New Release can be said to have in spades is baggage. As Primer’s final full album (for now), it carries the association of the struggles the band faced following its release, between lack of attention from their label to lineup troubles that would lead to several disbandments and reunions over the course of the late 2000s and 2010s. Relatedly but less evidently, it seems to me the sophomore album predicts or perhaps even directly reflects the struggles that Luttrell himself continued to endure from this time until his death in 2018.
With the power of hindsight, it’s hard to listen to songs like “Pills,” a more solemn take on finding refuge in drug use than the bubbling “Dose” from Introduction, or “Tricycle,” which laments the difficulties of getting older and finding that the time starts flying by. Even the songs that flaunt the band’s goofier, hornier side embrace a sort of honesty that helps make New Release feel like a more personal album that operates around a tight core of tangible emotions and experiences.
What followed this album was not the career Primer could have had, nor the one they deserved. But as (The) New Release turns 25 and as the revived version of the band continues on the road, the tension and anger conveyed by the music can be identified and released, again and again. To me, Primer 55 is all about catharsis. This might not be the life any of us wanted, but it’s the one we’ve got. I’m hoping to make the most of it, and while I will still reach for Introduction to Mayhem before any other Primer releases (and most releases by every other band in the world), the head-spinning conflict of New Release yields a batch of thoroughly worthwhile fare for listeners across a wide spectrum of the nu metal repertoire.
%20New%20Release'%20at%2025){kind=link}