Primitive Man – Observance
Release Date: 31st October 2025
Label: Relapse Records
Bandcamp
Genre: Doom, Sludge.
FFO: Bell Witch, Thou, Body Void.
Review By: Jeff Finch
This new Primitive Man will tear your face off and wear it like a jockstrap. If you’re reading this, chances are you’ve at least listened to a little bit of Primitive Man, thus no one needs to say just how abrasive and crushing this music is. According to the band, apparently this new one Observance is considered one of their more positive records, which is funny in a way because this album has all of the trademarks of Primitive Man plus a little bit more speed, which just enhances the nihilism and the bleak nothingness staring back from the darkness. On the other hand, if you’re a fan of Primitive Man, make sure you’ve got your jacket, boots, and some happy pills because this glacially paced, molasses soaked slab of enveloping, anger ridden doom is going to try and consume and punish.
What Primitive Man is known for are riffs and beats that move at a crawl, as if dragging themselves through tar and broken glass, the heavy distortion and piercing feedback more than enough to make a listener’s teeth hurt. What makes this Primitive Man record stand out versus each of their others, which do have a personality of their own, is the change in tempo and the various drum fills that pepper each track, that tempo shift an increase in speed but not necessarily ferocity. It shifts from a dirge-like, sludge-drenched crawl, every note coated in feedback, tar, and grime, the kind that requires bathing afterward, into a slightly cleaner, faster grind, still abrasive enough to flay but now with a grim sense of propulsion. Primitive Man doesn’t typically do uptempo and, though it’s only for spells on the record, the change up is well done and should be well received.
Where Primitive Man also dabbles, likely splitting fans into two factions, is noise. Pure, unentrenched, sonically enraged, visceral noise. When expressed within a larger composition (this album averages 11 minutes per song minus the interlude), it’s layers upon layers of feedback howl and metallic shriek, blurring the already shattered boundary between melody and decay. On first single Social Construct, the band takes almost four minutes to transition into the main groove, but the “noise” isn’t just for the sake of insertion: it’s an unsettling sound that gradually introduces the various band members, already having messed with our psyche before the first riff really hits. And in interlude Iron Sights, the band gives us a 2-minute breather. Not quite as abrasive but still loud, this track doesn’t introduce any sound from the band members themselves. Primitive Man have figured out how to use a grating, metal on metal sound that leaves their listeners with their teeth clenched and body cringing, while also figuring out how to insert this type of “melody” into their own sections to yield a bit of room to breathe, roughly halfway through the album.
Observance averages over ten minutes per song, each one a roller coaster chugging through an oil soaked cavern of filth and despair, but with each song, that signature Primitive Man sledgehammer to the senses takes hold, pure and utter stank face all but a certainty. Ethan’s vocals feel dragged from the darkest abyss, a terrifying realization that he’s not doing just sheer, powerful growls. Rather, his delivery seems calibrated to channel raw anguish and frustration, proving the point that vocals are by and large their own instrument. In this case, it’s an instrument of pain and suffering. Coupled with the viscous, molten mass that is the bass, courtesy of Jonathan Campos, and the thunderous roar of the drums from Joe Linden, each song feels like a concrete wall crushing you, those tempo shifts merely changing the rhythm of the dread, not its existence.
If you like your music nihilistic and abrasive, akin to dragging your ears across a mile of glass shards and hot coals, then you like Primitive Man. And if you like Primitive Man, you’ll love this. Press play at your own risk, this is an hour of brutality.
(5 / 5)
