Primitive Man will return with their most crushing album to date, Observance, coming out on October 31. After twelve years at the forefront of underground music, Primitive Man takes merciless aim at the plentiful ills that besiege the world around them, and in the process of doing so, do not spare themselves from their own flagellating tongue-lashings.

This is Primitive Man’s first LP since their album with Full Of Hell, Suffocation Hallucination, in 2023 and the first album with only Primitive Man since Immersion in 2020. Observance will be birthed into a very different musical landscape to the one that Primitive Man first emerged into, which is arguably worse in every conceivable way. The overwhelming sense of disillusionment 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.

Whilst McCarthy’s lyrics are a dominant presence throughout Observance, the six songs that make up the album are a truly collaborative effort, written and arranged with absolute devotion. Drummer Joe Linden, bassist Jon Campos and McCarthy threw themselves into writing shortly after the release of 2022’s Insurmountable EP. The trio describes themselves as being “obsessed” during the creation of Observance, in which the intricacies of shaping their evolving, trance-inducing sound became all-consuming.

The album’s first single, “Social Contract” “…deals with some of the universal issues that people are collectively facing in terms of the rise of authoritarianism and the erasure of history.  It is a backdrop for some of the more personal issues I speak about. The overarching fear, madness, anger and dread to accompany the pain of the rest. The hits at the beginning of the song also suggest a clock ticking as I believe our time with life as we know it, is about to change drastically as things are currently not moving on a path that is sustainable.  The video shows examples of these “problems” and insinuates who may be to blame and who may be benefiting from techno feudalism and other ‘world events.’” comments McCarthy. Watch and listen below.

Observance Track List:

1. Seer
2. Devotion
3. Transactional
4. Iron Sights
5. Natural Law
6. Social Contract
7. Water

Photo Credit: Raymond Flotat