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To listen to Primitive Man is to endure an ordeal. It is an act of submission to a sonic force so total and so physically oppressive that it borders on the transcendent. Fan accounts of their live performances speak not of entertainment but of a primal, intimidating experience where the sheer volume and weight of the sound can induce a trance-like state, a disembodied sensory overload where "you cease to exist". For over a decade, the Denver trio—vocalist/guitarist Ethan Lee McCarthy, bassist Jonathan Campos, and drummer Joe Linden—has cultivated this reputation with monastic discipline, earning the oft-repeated but rarely-disputed title of the heaviest band on the planet. Their music has been a soundtrack to pure, nihilistic rage, a "totally malignant sounding record" from the start that promised to "consume you whole".
It is from this foundation of absolute auditory punishment that their fourth full-length album, Observance, emerges. Released, fittingly, on Halloween , the album at first appears to be another chapter in their ongoing chronicle of human misery. The artwork, a bleak and harrowing creation by McCarthy himself, promises the familiar abyss. Yet, from its opening moments, it becomes clear that Observance is a different kind of beast. The rage is still present, a white-hot core of fury, but it is now shrouded in something new, something unexpected and arguably far heavier: profound sadness, stark melancholy, and a startling degree of musical nuance. Most shocking of all, in the deepest recesses of this despair, is a flicker of something that can only be described as hope.
The album's title itself is the key to understanding this profound shift. This is not merely an observation of a collapsing world, a passive act of seeing. The title is Observance, a word that implies a ritual, a duty, a solemn keeping of a rite. This re-frames the entire project from a simple polemic into an act of devoted, ritualistic witnessing. The band members described themselves as "obsessed" during the album's genesis, consumed by a process of "absolute devotion" to their craft. They are not just documenting the horror of a broken social contract and the insidious creep of techno-feudalism; they are performing an observance of it. This act of bearing witness, no matter how painful, becomes an act of resistance. Observance is Primitive Man's most complete and vital statement to date, a record where the crushing physical weight of their sound is finally matched by an equally crushing weight of intellectual and emotional complexity. It is an album that stares unflinchingly into the abyss of the modern world and, instead of simply screaming, chooses the more arduous, more defiant path of endurance and resolve.
To fully grasp the monumental leap forward that Observance represents, one must first trace the band's trajectory through the suffocating landscapes of their past work. Their evolution has not been one of radical stylistic shifts but of a slow, deliberate intensification and refinement of both their sound and their thematic focus. From a vessel of pure, undirected misanthropy, they have evolved into one of complex, targeted socio-political critique.
Their 2013 debut, Scorn, was a mission statement delivered with the force of a tectonic plate shift. It was a "savage, sparse mix of death metal, blackened noise, and doom" that established their unique brand of "primeval doom metal". The album was a monument to personal hatred and disgust, a raw and unvarnished expression of nihilism that immediately set them apart. It was, as one publication aptly described it, "the best worst thing that has ever happened to you".
If Scorn was a focused blast of hatred, 2017's Caustic was that hatred metastasizing into a sprawling, 75-plus-minute epic of societal decay. Described as a "lumbering Gollum" comprising twelve lengthy ventures into brutality, the album expanded the band's sonic palette to include more pronounced blackened sludge and noise elements. Lyrically, the focus broadened from the purely personal to the political, with themes of corruption, social collapse, and personal struggle intertwining to create a "cataclysmic soundtrack for a world gone awry". This marked a crucial pivot from screaming at an internal void to screaming at the external forces that create it.
This trajectory culminated in 2020's Immersion, arguably their most "anguished-sounding" and claustrophobic release prior to Observance. More concise and furious than its predecessor, the album turned its gaze inward once more, but with a newfound maturity. McCarthy's lyrics tackled existential crises and a deep, introspective look into personal ruin, confronting "things in myself that I've pushed down for a long time". Immersion set the stage for Observance by demonstrating a willingness to grapple with the internal consequences of external decay, creating a powerful synthesis of the personal and the political that would come to full fruition on their latest masterpiece.
The sonic identity of Observance is a study in masterful contradiction. It is at once a "return to form" and a bold leap into experimental territory. This is not a case of a band abandoning its core sound but rather of enriching it with a newfound confidence and artistic breadth. The experimentation on Observance happens within the monolithic structure of their doom/sludge foundation, creating cracks and fissures through which unfamiliar light—and darkness—can pass. This represents a profound maturation, moving beyond the "one-dimensional" criticism sometimes leveled at their earlier work into a realm where heaviness is defined not just by volume, but by dynamic contrast.
At its core, Observance is unequivocally a Primitive Man record. It delivers the suffocating, physically imposing experience the band is known for. The "bone-crushing riffs," "choking atmosphere," and "insidious tones" are all present and executed with terrifying precision. It remains a "full-blown assault on the senses," a challenging listen that demands the listener's complete attention. McCarthy's vocals are as inhuman as ever, a torrent of "bloodcurdling howls" and "exquisitely demonic" shrieks that sound less like a human performance and more like a natural disaster given voice.
For years, a recurring theme among fans and critics has been the difficulty of capturing the band's overwhelming live presence on a recording. The sheer physical impact of their sound—the way it rattles bones and seems to dim the lights in the venue—is legendary. McCarthy himself has acknowledged this challenge, stating that Observance is "the best capture we've ever had of what we do". The production on the album finally translates that sense of immense, suffocating pressure, making the experience of listening on headphones an unnervingly intimate and oppressive ordeal.
Viewed through the lens of punishment, the true genius of the album comes into focus. There can be no doubt that Observance is the band’s “most nuanced” work. For the first time, “scattered actual melodies” are allowed to pierce the veil of noise. This adds a stunning and disarming kind of “levity” that has never before existed in the lexicon of their sound. On the track “Devotion,” this is embodied in “soaring lead work” which, out of nowhere, pivots the song and transforms a classic Primitive Man romp into something far more emotionally complex.
The further embrace of their “psychedelic side” is equally amazing. The fourteen minute epic “Natural Law” is described by McCarthy as a “trance-like” song that heavily embraces a “dark psychedelic vibe.” This is not the stoner doom, hazy psychedelia assoicated with jam bands, but a far more sinister and hypnotic psychedelia, reminiscent of the dark, experimental soundscapes of a band like SWANS.
The final track, “Water,” takes this even further by layering its shifting tones over “almost lush chords and atmospheres” and culminating in a final “psychedelic descent.” The exploration of texture and atmosphere benefit from the increased use of negative space more than any of their previous records, where the combination of acoustic parts and electronic fields offers a quiet dread that renders the full-band onslaught all the more cataclysmic when it inevitably returns.
This dynamic interplay of violence and atmosphere is anchored by the formidable rhythm section of Jonathan Campos and Joe Linden. Their performance on Observance is a masterclass in tension and release. Linden's drumming is not merely percussive; it is architectural. His work is described as enhancing the songs' atmosphere without ever calling undue attention to itself, providing perfectly measured transitions that lay the groundwork for the album's most hypnotic and psychedelic passages. On "Social Contract," Campos's bass work is singled out as some of the "moodiest, most atmospheric" he has ever recorded, becoming a monstrous, driving force that carries the ten-minute track through its darkest corridors. Together, they are not just keeping time; they are meticulously constructing the tense, fever-dream-like structures that define the album's most compelling moments, proving that the three members are "ridiculously attuned to one another".
The sonic evolution on Observance is not a stylistic exercise; it is a direct result of a profound shift in the band's lyrical and conceptual focus. The album's title is a declaration of intent: this is a work of deep, critical engagement with a world in crisis. The rage, once a primal and often internal force, has been honed into a sharp, articulate instrument of social and political critique, armed with an intellectual framework that allows the band to move beyond pure nihilism toward something far more challenging and resonant.
The main lyrical thesis of Observance is a merciless critique of the societal ills that surround us. McCarthy's lyrics reflect the situation of the personal and professional failures of the writer on the backdrop of “the broken social contract decimating the lives of the working class.” This is not the vague and generalized rage that is typical of extreme metal. The specific and frightening targets of McCarthy's lyrics is the ‘techno-feudalism’ where AI and technology is used not to liberate people but to control them, take their jobs, and destroy their art. McCarthy feels the control of the rich and powerful over the poor and powerless of society.
With its lyrics and music, the lead single “Social Contract” signals the intense heart of the album. McCarthy explains the song as “the rise of authoritarianism and the erasure of history” and the percussive hit at the beginning evokes the feeling of a “clock ticking” to a drastic, unsustainable change in life as we know it.
This connects to the foundational philosophy of the social contract as articulated by Rousseau, who wrote "Man was born free, but everywhere he is in chains". Primitive Man's music is the sound of those chains being not just felt, but tested to their breaking point.
A crucial element that elevates Observance's lyrical content beyond typical genre fare is the explicit influence of San Francisco Poet Laureate Tongo Eisen-Martin, specifically his 2021 collection Blood on the Fog. This is not a casual inspiration but a deep conceptual wellspring from which the album draws its intellectual and revolutionary spirit. Eisen-Martin's poetry is a fiery, erudite eruption of "revolutionary zeal," anchored in socialist critique and confronting the horrors of U.S. history—imperialism, racism, and the carceral state—not by recounting them, but by "vomiting them up". His work aims to "provoke a confrontation" and envisions a path toward "collective liberation".
By drawing from this source, McCarthy arms his despair with a potent political and philosophical vocabulary. The rage is no longer simply an emotional reaction to suffering; it is an ideologically informed stance against the systems that create that suffering. Eisen-Martin's work provides a framework for understanding oppression not as a random series of misfortunes but as the deliberate outcome of a capitalist and racist state. This intellectual grounding is the key that unlocks the album's most startling theme: hope.
How can an album so relentlessly bleak, so sonically punishing, be what McCarthy calls the "most positive Primitive Man record to date"? The answer lies in a radical redefinition of positivity. The hope on Observance is not a naive optimism or a wish for a brighter future. It is the grim, calloused hope of the survivor, the resolve to endure. As McCarthy states, he wants listeners "to feel empowered, to feel strength when they listen to it, to feel the urge to keep going". It is a philosophy of acknowledging the "miserable shit" of the world while remaining "resigned to continue".
This is where the album's new dominant emotion, sadness, becomes so vital. Rage is a reaction, but sadness implies a sense of loss—a mourning for a world that could have been better. This capacity for grief is a prerequisite for the desire to fight for change. The album seeks a "path towards the light" even as it is "picking over the carcass of disillusionment". The hope found here is the hope inherent in revolutionary thought: the belief that understanding the mechanics of oppression is the first step toward dismantling them. It is the "righteous rage" that can "light it all up" and inspire a holistic view of the system's failures, rather than a retreat into shock and apathy.
This album does not consist of individual songs, but revolves around a single emotional core for its 68 minutes of runtime. It drags the listener on a psychological excavation filled with tragedy, fury, and a final, hard-earned determination. This is a difficult, harrowing journey, but the album is painstakingly designed in its emotional ebbs and flows, rising in tension and insights, and culminating in an unstable and unforgettable finale.
The first tracks, "Seer" and Devotion" hint at the album's bifurcated character. "Seer" is a frontal assault, an explosion of “uncanny aggression and desperate propulsion,” and an accompaniment to a soul wresting for life. "Devotion" follows and is a more classic Primitive Man track, slowly lulling the listener into a nostalgic state of anxious slow suffocation, which is only broken at the five minute mark with fast paced, pulse trance threshold and the first peak of transcendental, psychedelic lead work, a ray of hope in otherwise oppressive darkness.
"Transactional" and the short interlude "Iron Sights" in the middle of the album, push the listener into an ocean of tension. "Transactional" is the sound of a fever-dream, the disengaged state of a body and soul slowly shutting down, wrapped in a suffocating spiral of heavy plodding rhythms and toxic, circular guitar work.
The track “Iron Sights” follows, functioning as an abrasive, noisy slice that serves as a boundary, a division, an end, and a fresh start.
It is in the second half that Observance most profoundly unveils the secrets which the album has kept, the first being the fourteen-minute epic, “Natural Law.” Every single part of the band's sound is "hauled past its rational limit" in this sublime movement of drastic terror. It flits between haunting, ugly doom and unexpectedly ferocious black metal speed. It is a personal account of isolation and hopelessness, betrayal and the ever-present threat of violence. It confronts the question of whether to give in to hatred or to the "strength and the spark" that can carry a person forward instead of the dead end of “jail” or “dead.”
The album's other ten-minute-plus epic and lead single, "Social Contract," comes next. If "Natural Law" serves as the album's emotional center, this track serves as its intellectual core. It has been described as the band's "most singular composition to date," and in the first half, a strange, rhythmic clapping sound accompanies some of Campos's moody bass work.
The track serves as a culmination of themes running throughout the album. This includes the noxious rise of authoritarianism as well as the challenge of an overstretched and crumbling society. It remains resolutely anthemic.
"Water"—the final track—offers no neat closure. It’s neither the best song on the album nor the worst; it simply ‘feels’ most like an ending. A sense of heaviness and drama prevails, and there is ‘unstable’ restlessness, which gives the impression of something unresolved—something unfinished, still growing. For a final psychedelic plunge, there is more busyness, more chaos, and it is more of a distraction than much of the album, suggesting not a conclusion, but an onward, upward transformation of the band. The listener is left not with a sense of closure, but with the stark, unresolved reality that the work is not finished.
Observance is a monumental achievement. It is more than simply Primitive Man's masterpiece or their most complete album to date; it is a vital, harrowing document of our specific historical moment. On this record, the band has become "stronger in all areas," creating a work that is as intellectually rigorous as it is sonically devastating. It is the sound of a band that has stared long into the abyss and, as Nietzsche warned, felt the abyss stare back—but has refused to become the monster.
The album fundamentally redefines what "heavy" can mean in the context of music. The true weight of Observance comes not from its down-tuned guitars or its guttural screams, but from its unflinching emotional and intellectual honesty. The profound sadness for a world that is lost, the deep disillusionment with the systems that govern our lives, and the stubborn, paradoxical flicker of hope—these are far heavier burdens to carry than simple, uncomplicated rage. This is, as one reviewer perfectly captured it, "the sound of catharsis in an age where catharsis doesn't work anymore".
In a world that feels as if it is simultaneously burning and repeating itself, Primitive Man has crafted the essential soundtrack for the "darkest of timelines". They hold a mirror up to a profoundly broken world, and the reflection is terrifying. Yet, in that reflection, they find something more than despair. By shouldering the immense weight of their observations, by transforming their rage into resolve, and by finding a reason to continue in the face of utter futility, they have created their most punishing and profound work. The heaviest burden, Observance seems to argue, is not the weight of the world's horrors, but the will to keep going despite them. That act of defiance is the album's ultimate, crushing statement.
Primitive Man is on tour this Fall in support of their new record Observance, the tour kicks off November 24th in Salt lake City and wraps up 12/20 in Chicago IL
Observance is available now in multiple formats via Relapse Records.
