ALBUM REVIEW: Primitive Man - "Caustic"

By: Ernesto Aguilar

Album Type: Full Length

Date Released: 6/10/2017

Label: Relapse Records

"Caustic" is an ambitious project, among the band's longest and most complex to date. Like their past work, the group explores nihilism in sound that rivals some of the most hopeless metal you've heard. That unrelenting quicksand of guitars and bass is here, as are those vocals of your nightmares.  Primitive Man offer up some of its most excellent music to date, making this sprawling and charging full length worth the wait.

“Caustic” CD//DD//LP Track listing

1. My Will

2. Victim              

3. Caustic

4. Commerce

5. Tepid

6. Ash

7. Sterility

8. Sugar Hole

9. The Weight

10. Disfigured

11. Inevitable

12. Absolutes

The Review:

Few artists of any genre were as unflinching and brutally frank as poet Gil Scott Heron. He profiled the 1977 Houston police murder of Vietnam War veteran Jose Campos Torres in an eponymous poem. In it, Heron remarked bitterly, " I had said I wasn't going to write no more words down about people kicking us when we're down/About racist dogs that attack us and drive us down, drag us down and beat us down/But the dogs are in the street/The dogs are alive and the terror in our hearts has scarcely diminished." And in his 1971 poem "Home is Where the Hatred Is," Heron touched on his lifelong struggle with drug addiction, which cast a shadow until he succumbed to complications of HIV in 2011. He wrote, "Stand as far away from me as you can and ask me why/Hang on to your rosary beads/Close your eyes to watch me die/You keep saying, kick it, quit it, kick it, quit it/God, but did you ever try, to turn your sick soul inside out/So that the world, can watch you die."

When Primitive Man rose to prominence with its own "Home is Where the Hatred Is," a 2015 EP that put its unflinching rawness on full display, you almost had to wonder if this is what an overdose internally would sound like. There are so many sludge and doom metal bands. However, few acts are as rapturously gritty as Primitive Man. Unlike the funeral doom and black metal with which many heavy groups mingle genetic material, the Denver, Colorado trio instead pours down your throat a broken glass pile of noise. Having release so many splits, solo singles and EPs, they have carved a path into your flesh where Primitive Man's aural brutality is unwavering, raging and ceaseless. The sandpapery touch of noise flays you at many points, and such is an unusual addition to doom, given how often noise influences stay in their avant garde lane. The average doom Primitive Man never was, and fans of this style must this day surely rejoice for their returning full length.


"Caustic" is an ambitious project, among the band's longest and most complex to date. Like their past work, the group explores nihilism in sound that rivals some of the most hopeless metal you've heard. That unrelenting quicksand of guitars and bass is here, as are those vocals of your nightmares.

The new album starts with "My Will" and "Victim," which share a deep guitar squeal in common along with a guttural howl. They are the kind of tracks that remind you why you love this music. The guitar and vocals of Ethan McCarthy are searing from start to finish, while the band's bass and drums thrash into a muddy current of despair. The most beautiful of sludge flings you into some oblivion that is hard to fathom or find release. Mission accomplished here, where this two-act opener is the scene setter for the onslaught to come.

Listeners will gravitate to the triple towers of "Caustic": a pair of 12-minute songs and a 10-minute cut that give Primitive Man its chance to be truly creative.  "Commerce" and "Disfigured" are in particular what makes the group interesting. The music's pace is methodical without feeling overindulgent and long. The noise elements border on a controlled chaos akin to the Boredoms. However, McCarthy's vocals are what stand out most. Those diabolical growls and deep-gut screams stick in your mind's eye until you go back again to listen. Indecipherable, unyielding and without end. By "Inevitable," the final long track, you are mesmerized by the intensity, taking it in as brutally frank performance unlike many others. Primitive Man offer up some of its most excellent music to date, making this sprawling and charging full length worth the wait.

In "Winter in America," Gil Scott Heron wept for the enormity of darkness in 1973. It was a moment in which President Richard Nixon had been deposed, the Black Panthers had been vanquished and it felt in many quarters like certain doom was upon us. "And ain't nobody fighting," Heron said, "'cause nobody knows what to save." And with "Caustic"'s typhoon of guitars, noise and roars, you are quite possibly too going to hold what's dear. It's going to be a hard ride.

"Caustic" is available here

Band info: bandcamp || facebook