Primitive Man

A dreich Monday night seems like the ideal time for the misery of Primitive Man, the grey sky hanging above as I descend into the belly of Stereo.

Australian-Icelandic support band Kollaps take to the stage after setting up a bass, samplers, a battered sheet of metal, two huge floor toms and a massive metal spring. Named after the first Einstürzende Neubauten album, they continue their experimental legacy with this post-industrial noise assault.

Vocalist Wade Black brings a frenetic energy to the stage, looking like Brett Anderson crossed with Iggy Pop. He takes off his shirt and jacket mid-set to reveal his tattooed and scarred torso, then yanks crowd members closer to the stage. The set finished as he fiddled with amps like Mark E. Smith then walked into the crowd with two large black sticks held above his head. I can’t say I always knew what was going on, but Kollaps certainly made an impression.

Underground feels like the correct place for Primitive Man’s pitch-black mix of doom, death, and sludge metal. Kollaps battered the crowd with their rapid-fire racket but watching Primitive Man is more like slowly sinking into a tar pit.

Beginning with ‘Social Contract’ from new album Observance, the band is bathed in projector light. Constantly flickering, blurry CRT visuals accompany the whole show, disorientating the crowd. It’s difficult to make out the individual images, mirroring the lyrics by vocalist, guitarist and visual artist Ethan Lee McCarthy. They might be unclear but they create a distinct sense of unease. The song kicks into a slow-motion gallop as the visuals shift into a monochrome strobe. ‘The Lifer’, a bludgeoning song about the pain of life on the road, is paired with warped blue-green visuals that remind me of deep sea bioluminescence.

My left eye twitches when the feedback peaks at the start of each song and I see people around me adjust their earplugs. Even though I was careful, my ears are still ringing for hours afterwards.

While glacial headbanging is the norm, the band mixes up the tempo throughout the set, with drummer Joe Linden switching effortlessly between sparse beats and lumbering sprints. ‘Victim’ from 2017’s Caustic moves from roiling distortion to quarter-speed blastbeats, still relatively speedy compared to most of their output. The chiming chords at the end of Devotion shine out of the murk.

The band may present a world without hope, but there’s some small, tender moments between members as they look to each other for cues. McCarthy faces sideways, locking in with bassist Jonathan Campos. There’s also no typical metal posturing, no one is hailing Satan. The band themselves are barely visible in the VHS glare of the projections. No amount of corpse paint, spikes or torches could make this music sound any more grim, it’s already hit rock bottom.

I often describe them as ‘the worst band I’ve ever heard’ but it’s a compliment — they so effectively show the worst that humanity has to offer, our worst potential. The distorted newsreader that appeared in the opening projection was introducing the headlines: here is a world of rampant capitalism, gun violence, racism, unhinged but powerful people. Dragged down together into this unnerving morass of a gig, the true horrors of modern life have been laid out for us. The band seems to ask: do you feel uncomfortable? Good. Now what?