Oct 16

Oct 16 On Observance, Hope and Writing Doom Metal From a Rock n' Roll Perspective: A Conversation with Ethan Lee McCarthy

Primitive Man plays music for a very specific kind of person.

Anyone can survive one of their shows as a cultural stunt. A temporary baptism in noise where you and a hundred strangers agree to be collectively bulldozed by a shared sense of dread. It’s a fascinating experience, the kind of thing you can’t describe to coworkers the next day without sounding completely unhinged. But the people who become fans, the ones who buy the records, wear the shirts, and return for more, are different. They’re the kind of people who enjoy the bulldozing.

Who find something clarifying in the ritualized collapse. It’s not masochism, exactly. It’s more like running doomsday drills for your soul, a way of preparing for the inevitable by feeling it early and on purpose. That might sound insane, but it makes a strange sort of sense once you feel it in your bones and if you feel their music anywhere else in your body, you’re doing it wrong. If it doesn’t make you vibrate from the inside out, you’re not gonna get it.

"I’m an extreme person in my emotions", explains their towering frontman Ethan Lee McCarthy.

McCarthy and his bandmates Jonathan Campos and Joe Linden are releasing a new record. Observance is a whopping sixty-eight minutes of what Primitive Man does best and then some. Although it’s not a departure in any way, shape of form from their mission statement of sonic obliteration and bearing witness to common horrors, but something feels different. Even if the best qualifier for Primitive Man’s music would be "monolithic", their music has come a long way since their debut album Scorn and it keeps evolving.

Observance is the band’s fourth full-length in thirteen years, but their twenty-fifth official release if you count all the singles, splits, and whatnot. It’s their first recorded statement in over two years, and somehow it feels even less predictable than the rest. Not that Primitive Man were ever telegraphic to begin with, but this one sounds like their war rig has drifted into unmapped territory. McCarthy doesn’t disagree: "A lot of the ideas on this record manifested themselves through jamming. They turned into the extended psychedelic sections you can hear on the record."

The music is definitely more psychedelic, but there's something else.

An Album About Hope (Sort Of)

"It’s an angry record, but I don’t think it’s our angriest record. I think it’s our saddest. There’s definitely some angry shit in there. I think there’s a lot more sadness than anger on this record. Immersion is nothing but a record about hatred. This one leans on other topics that are depressing. I’m talking about personal problems, the state of the world and the rise of fascism on a global scale. It’s about living with your own problems while the world around you becomes unrecognizable in a way you find disgusting."

The crushing length and sheer sonic obliteration of Observance shouldn’t be mistaken for repetition. This isn’t a continuation, it’s a mutation. If the record feels more volatile, more unhinged, it’s because new elements have started bleeding into the mix.

Notably: hope.

Yeah, I know how that sounds. Hearing hope on a Primitive Man record is like finding a flower growing out of a nuclear crater, fragile, confusing and dangerous to believe in. But it’s there, buried under all that distortion if you’re looking for it. "There’s a feeling of hopelessness here because there are so many things I can’t change as just one man. But also I’m not giving up on hope and not giving up on getting through these things. Living on this planet at someone who believe in equal rights and absolute freedom. To survive, I must turn to hope", says McCarthy.

At 41 years old, Ethan Lee McCarthy has spend half of his life hurling his rage and despair at audiences around the world and felt that it was time to address the same issues from a different place: "When you sing night after night about the worst events of your adult life, it becomes draining. It’s difficult, because you’re reliving these things every single time you sing these songs. After decades of doing that, it was important for me to come from a different place on this album. Old fans of the band will still be onboard with what is on Observance. There’s plenty of psychotic-ass shit on there."

McCarthy has mentioned before that carrying all that negative energy into his performances was a heavy load to bear, but the band is now artistically taking action. "There are too many people who haven’t survived because they haven’t found hope in this mess. On Observance, I wanted to emphasize that we need to stick together, have hope and strive for a better world. Even if the music sounds the way it does and some of the things I say aren’t the most positive, I think it’s essential in order to endure. Not just for me personally, but for anybody", he says.

Doom & Roll

One thing that keeps Primitive Man’s slow, trudging music exciting is how unpredictable it stays. You never quite know when the next riff will land or whether it’ll even land at all. Sometimes it lingers like an echo in a ruined cathedral; sometimes McCarthy claws his way back to the surface, roaring with fresh venom. Primitive Man songs use time and space like invisible monsters prowling an haunted landscape."We approach this slow music with a rock ’n’ roll energy. Even if it’s slow, plodding and dissonant, we want it to be a journey and an experience with every song,” says the singer.

What McCarthy means by rock ’n’ roll has nothing to do with swagger or rhythm , it’s about instinct. He, Campos, and Linden write by feel, not by formula. Their songs don’t follow a plan so much as they emerge, like geological events. "We will know when we have something. I think it’s because the music is so long that it has to be about what feels right. The songs are never really finished until we record them," he explains.

But that’s not all, there’s more feeding into the noise than distortion pedals, feedback loops and Chuck Berry. “We’re definitely seeking inspiration outside of music. I know Jon and Joe watch a lot of movies and that Jon implemented a lot of soundtrack-related concepts to Observance. I’m into movies too, but I’ve been reading a lot through the writing and recording process of this record. I’ve carried Blood on the Fog, by Tongo Eisen-Martin in my bag for some time and I’ve been picking it up more than one time. It’s a pretty short read. Otherwise, I’ve read Werner Herzog’s Every Man For Himself And God Against All and The Twilight World. Barracoon, by Zora Neale Hurston. Some real dark stuff.”

Primitive Man is sidestepping on Observance. They’re shifting their weight without losing balance. It feels right, like the inevitable next stage in their evolution. This is the record we didn’t know we were waiting for, but somehow always hoped would arrive. On October 31st, the Earth will shake under your feet again , only this time, it’ll feel right. Observance is the sound of destruction becoming clarity. The soundtrack to tearing down what’s rotted so something new can finally breathe. If you were already a fan of Primitive Man, you know exactly what I’m talking about.

* Follow me on Instagram and Bluesky to keep up with new posts *