Primitive Man don’t just make albums, they produce a state of mind, for those who dare enter, it’s extraordinary.
I have written before about the notion of heavy music and what makes it heavy. Sure, down-tuned guitars help but music can also be heavy emotionally (although I guess you wouldn’t call an emotional gut wrenching folk song ‘heavy’, but I digress), my point is the very word itself can be conceived in various ways, each valid in their own way. However, if you didn’t know of Primitive Man beforehand (where have you been?!) then I can safely say, they are probably one of the heaviest bands in existence. And not just in a sonic sense (although they are in a league of their own when it comes to that) but just in an all encompassing, suffocating sense of palpable weight.
From the first seconds of first song “Seer” the listener is plunged into the same subterranean air one has come to expect of Primitive Man: newly-refreshed, yes — but still utterly unforgiving. The opening track unspools with feedback that roars like some buried engine finally unchained, suspended between ritual invocation and sheer sonic terror. It says “we still know how to punish”, and (like this very website) draws back the veil so you can see all of the messy, brutal, scary but also hopeful inner workings of reality, and we cannot help but be drawn in to see for ourselves, in fact, there is no point trying to escape it, like the event horizon of a black hole, it is inevitable.
“Devotion” starts with feedback squeels and all manner of unsettling noises, intentionally putting the listener on edge, then when the members are finally ready to unleash the onslaught, it is utterly suffocating, hard to breathe through the sheer weight of the ferocious assault, it isn’t for the feint of heart, but again, there is this gossamer thin shred of hope, a sliver of light when you’ve been trapped underground, looking for an exit which feels like it might disappear if you try and listen for it intently, it’s completely mesmerising.
“Natural Law” sees the band firing on all cylinders, everything has been leading up to this point, the aggression, the sadness, the narrative, all of it collapses in on itself, falls apart, then explodes. I don’t mean to sound hyperbolic, but this song is something else, it’s a wonder of extreme music and it reaches into you and rewires your inner turmoil in a fundamental way, it’s intoxicating and completely brilliant and honestly feels like something the band have been building towards for a very long time, it’s as if they’ve reached deep within the very earth itself and dragged something primordial into existence, bravo chaps.
So, to sum up, this album is so extraordinarily heavy that as it forces you to the bottom, not just of the earth, but everything, there is nothing to look down at with this much weight bearing down on you, the only thing you can do is twist your head and look upwards, if only to see everything else out there and to give things perspective. This isn’t an album to put on during a family dinner, but if you are an explorer looking for an experience, then put it on, strap yourself in, and prepare to go on a journey of discovery, utterly magnificent. It hits hard, but most importantly, it means something, and that should be cherished.
