Review: Primrose Path’s Ruminations
Primrose Path
Ruminations
Independent
The gothic heart of progressive metal beats loud in Perth.
There’s a kind of album that doesn’t just land, it lingers. It casts long shadows, rewrites your expectations of a debut, and worms its way into your skull with a quiet, knowing grin. Ruminations, the commanding first full-length from Perth’s Primrose Path, is one of those rare records, the kind destined to echo far beyond its origins.
This is modern progressive metal carved from obsidian: sharp-edged, glistening with depth, and infused with an unmistakable gothic sensibility. Across its 43-minute runtime, Ruminations doesn’t just show promise; it claims its space with a maturity and aural persona that many bands take decades to find.
From the opening track, it’s clear that Lindsay Rose is a generational talent. Her voice is the album’s polestar. It’s not just powerful but also purposeful. She commands the void with a scream and haunts the silence with a whisper, pivoting from soulful clarity to operatic grandeur to visceral growls without ever sounding disjointed. At times she recalls Kobra Paige and Charlotte Wessels, or even Floor Jansen in restraint, but comparisons don’t quite cover it. Lindsay is writing her own book, not just a chapter in someone else’s.
Behind her stands a band not just aligned but entwined in vision. Brenton Lush, Lindsay’s longtime creative counterpart, sculpts towering structures and haunted cathedrals with his guitar tones, shimmering with gothic nostalgia in one breath and descending into downtuned menace in the next. Joined in the songwriting fold by bassist Scott Henry, the rhythm section, rounded out by Ashley Doodkorte (Voyager) on drums, moves with both elegance and force, equal parts tectonic and serpentine.
It’s a rare thing for a debut to feel this curated. Of the eight tracks here, four are returning singles: Irrelevance, Unrepent, Obstruct and HEX. But the true triumph of Ruminations is that the previously unheard songs aren’t just good; they’re the reason this album exists. Where many bands frontload their debut with known material and bury the rest, Primrose Path have taken the opposite approach. They’ve hidden the best cuts like trapdoors beneath your feet.
Propensity is the absolute standout, a slow-burning fever dream that flirts with sonic psychosis. It begins with restraint, all peripheral tension and ominous ambience, before dropping into one of the heaviest, most cathartic climaxes in modern progressive metal. If Lindsay’s closing wail doesn’t shake the listener’s spine loose, they might already be dead.
Then there’s Harm, a deceptive little beast that waltzes through its first half like a moonlit slow dance before plunging into a brutal, near-industrial instrumental breakdown. Persona Non Grata unfurls like a storm, its surging riffs crashing with unbridled force, while a torrent of intense energy propels the sound forward. It emerges as the album’s emotional centrepiece and a searing glimpse into the human ache that fuels these songs, with unspoken truths woven into every note. Finally, Shifted, short, sharp, and sinister, where elastic rhythms tangle with haunted vocal lines to leave the listener in a possessed, trance-like daze.
Each track is defined by a singular rhythmic idea. The marching chug of Irrelevance, the woozy, dreamy glide of Unrepent, and the sinister sway of Obstruct—each of these ideas evolves organically, never devolving into self-indulgence. Ruminations doesn’t chase chaos; it sculpts intensity with care. This is the sound of a band that knows exactly who they are.
The production shines with a refined touch at every turn. Tracking is handled with precision, each element captured with clarity and purpose. The mix weaves a rich, immersive tapestry, balancing dynamics with depth, while the mastering imparts a final polish that amplifies the impact without dulling its raw power. The result is a record that resonates with emotional and sonic depth.
Ruminations is what happens when a band treats every detail as part of a unified vision. From song structure to emotional pacing to tone design, nothing is left to chance. The album draws from a rich lineage of Australian heavy music, nodding to the cinematic scope of Dead Letter Circus, the angular intensity of Twelve Foot Ninja, and the emotional weight of We Lost the Sea. It also reaches into the moody introspection of Deftones, the crystalline precision of Spiritbox, and the seismic weight of Meshuggah. Through it all, Primrose Path sound unmistakably like themselves.
To borrow from the album’s title, this isn’t just something you listen to. It’s something you dwell in, something that thinks with you, that turns over emotional weight in the same way you do in your quietest moments. That’s rare. That’s powerful. And from a debut album, that’s practically unheard of.
Ruminations isn’t just a debut; it’s a declaration and a revelation. If this is what Primrose Path sound like now, the future holds nothing but promise.
ANDY JONES