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I've gotta say I'm disappointed in this one. I was one of the defenders of 2004's Devil's Ground, and I still think it's their best album overall, but this is a big letdown. The band made a big deal about 'making some changes' on this CD, which had us all worried, but it turns out the 'changes' were just really minor things like using keys a bit more, so that's not the problem here, the problem with Seven Seals is that rather than write new songs Matt Sinner just hit the 'snooze' button and recycled old ones instead.

If Devil's Ground was 90% killer, then Seven Seals is 90% filler. There just are not very many good songs on here. Opener "Demons And Angels" is okay, but it almost completely recycles the much better "Lightyears From Home" off Black Sun. "Rollercoaster" is probably the best song on here, and the supremely stupid lyrics almost kill it. The title track is pretty good, but then we get a bunch of fill-in tracks like "Evil Spell", "The Immortal Ones" and "All For One" – songs that sound like you took all the filler cuts off the last three albums and set the blender on 'puree' – dull, dull, dull. "Diabolus" is pretty good, and "Carniwar" has some balls, but they are not on a par with any single song off Devil's Ground or Nuclear Fire. The absolute suck is the ballad "In Memory", which is maybe the worst song Primal Fear have ever recorded. It honestly sounds like a Pearl Jam song, or some wussy piece of shit from Stone Temple Pilots – I am not kidding. All-acoustic-strummed-flannel-wearing-shitpile. This album would have rated a 4 maybe without that one.

But maybe not, this is not a terrible album, but I am not so complacent that I will eat lukewarm crap and like it just because it's from a good band. Primal Fear can do much, much better than this, and I expect them to. Seven Seals isn't a waste of time, but it is pretty darned mediocre.