To fans, Observance offers a cloister from the world’s beatings. For Primitive Man, it’s a necessary refresh of purpose and power as evil metastasizes.
Release date: October 31, 2025 | Relapse Records | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | Stream/Purchase
I’m far from the only one here at Everything Is Noise that likes Primitive Man – four different writers have written about their work in seven years, and even more are down with the Denver band as pure fans, no writing required. They’re a band where, as long as you’re predisposed to like music this indescribably heavy, the love is abundant and palpable if you even pay cursory attention to the state of the world. Frankly, I’m getting sick of bringing that up, but I’m sicker of putting up with it directly as are bands like this I’m sure, who imbue their music with intense emotion as a direct response to everything going straight to fucking hell over and over again. No scroll is doom-free, just like the songs on Primitive Man‘s new LP, Observance.
Collectively across all metal music writing, I think we’re running out of ways to describe bands like Primitive Man, but I’m going to try my best here because they deserve it as Denver’s premier abyssal trio. Truth is, in a more idealistic world with much less fascistic ire where the younger (and older, let’s face it) generations aren’t having their brains blended up by AI and propaganda, this band would lose purpose. Primitive Man become neutered, the sonics as intact as they are now, but the lyrics would demand the suspension of disbelief or at least the two-way street of a fictional fantasy trip to fulfill. You might be surprised to know that Observance meets somewhere in the middle – per singer and guitarist Ethan Lee McCarthy (also of Vermin Womb, Many Blessings, and more), this is actually the band’s most positive and hopeful album yet.
Don’t get me wrong, the music is still oppressively, horrifically heavy and some of the most dense shit you can subject your ears to, but, as they say, there are cathedrals everywhere for those with eyes to see. There’s motion and somewhat subtle (I mean, relatively speaking anyway) intonations that give away a more hopeful mood. Opener “Seer” quickly gallops into a groovy gear after a menacing minute-long intro of lurching doom malaise. It’s a driving force, forward into progress that veers on the death-doom spectrum even as McCarthy bellows and rasps away in abject agony. The repeated chanting early in “Natural Law” is righteously violent and defiant, and as the second longest song the band have ever made (bested only by “Cum” from their 2014 P//M demo to my knowledge) it’s practically a short film with all the progressions and sonic flips from bottomless, echoed terror to sludgy forays into genuine melody that offer some of the only semblance of light on Observance.
“Social Contract” is a stunner, probably my favorite Primitive Man song ever since I started listening to them with Caustic. It’s tribal and grating, fitting as the song and video seem to have some commentary on purity and hypocritical moral enforcement in the ‘rules of thee, not for me’ sense. While Observance is lighter on the harsh noise (except the interlude “Iron Sights”), there’s still a keen, calculated use of constant guitars and hammered drums. This track and “Seer” from earlier are key moments where Joe Linden’s drums really get to shine and make a song a song, building rhythms with a deep, unsettled bass tone from Jon Campos (also of Black Curse, took me way too long to realize that) backing them up.
Despite all of this, doom and immense weight are still at the core of what Primitive Man do. Slow, 15BPM sections feel agonizing, dissolving all sensibilities and rendering you down to your most feeling aspects. This band started as a direct reaction to life itself, living as someone aware of mass devastation and the personal machinations of suffering, something McCarthy wanted to explore in the most sonically domineering manner in opposition to the other, faster, punkier bands the trio were part of before. Primitive Man don’t exist without a profoundly broken world to hold that mirror up to, and while I’d trade them and any realism-based music out there for a better place to live for all, at least we have their kinship as we writhe and drag ourselves through it each day.
Observance is another deliberate, powerful LP that perhaps represents the Primitive Man mythos the best. Even at its longer length, it feels more captivating than concise projects like the recent Immersion. In a podcast interview with Lambgoat, McCarthy explains Observance‘s cover art – a destitute figure draped with a large snake, its body wrapped around the neck like a noose – as representing himself holding onto and containing depression and other consuming, negative emotions each day. If the snake gets let loose or unruly, it will swallow you whole. It’s his dead albatross, a burden to bear with no cause or cure on the horizon, but grants a dark insight into what the music hopes to achieve and present. To that end, I can see the positive slant this LP contains because even if the circumstances are horrible, it still depicts success and perseverance. It’s one many will find great meaning, and hopefully comfort, in its hollowed, bony grasp.
Band photo by Vanessa Valadez
