PRIMITIVE MAN – new album out end of October

Photo: Vanessa Valadez

PRIMITIVE MAN are still the heaviest band on just about any given festival billing, they’re still ‘crushing’, and Observance is sure to flex the vocabularies of folk reaching for new ways to describe their punishing sound. 

Yet beyond the heft of their musical propulsion, they’ve got a few things they want to get off their chests this time around. Observance is an indicator that Primitive Man are taking stock of who they are, where they find themselves today, and where they’re heading next. After twelve years at the forefront of underground music, Primitive Man takes merciless aim at the plentiful ills that besiege the music industry and the world around them, and in the process of doing so do not spare themselves from their flagellating tongue-lashings.

The overwhelming sense of disillusionment in Observance is pervasive as vocalist and guitarist Ethan Lee McCarthy charts the complexities and toxicities that have dissolved his sense of wonder at living out his childhood dreams of being a musician. PRIMITIVE MAN unshackle themselves from expectations and found themselves galvanised by the notion that they don’t belong to any particular scene or movement. Within this isolation comes a sense of freedom.

Whilst McCarthy’s lyrics are a dominant presence throughout Observance, the songs that make up the album are a truly collaborative effort written and arranged with absolute devotion. Featuring drummer Joe Linden and bassist Jon Campos, the trio describe themselves as “obsessed” during the genesis of Observance; the intricacies of shaping their evolving, trance-inducing sound became all-consuming.

Recording and mixing took place in February and March 2025, at Bricktop Recording Studio, Chicago with producer Andy Nelson, before being mastered by Arthur Rizk. 

The band about the new song and album: “The songs were written by all three of us with an obsessive focus on every component from lyrical content to “the riff” and in the process brought us to the brink of absolute madness. This is our most focused, dismal, spacious and trance-like release. As always – it remains dense and not for the weak of spirit. .. Do this one justice and play it LOUD.”