- Please exit stage left if you’re after a metal record that boasts thrilling, bloody bumping passages, fire brand virtuosity, and so many complex time signatures you’ll need a masters degree in mathematics to look at it. This split won’t be for you. For me, however, it’s everything I want in a metal record done to a stomach rupturing tee.
What this split from Primitive Man and Unearthly Trance is, is a race to the bottom: a thorough exploration of both the headtrip and the viscous, sucking trudge first brought to us by Grief. Both bands here brandish barbaric, bludgeoning, close-quarters thunder matched with power electronics. Slowcore riddled doom exudes a slime and filth that imparts an atmosphere of drowning. The depth of sludge’s distortion, the maleficent crawl of doom and the interjections and moulding soundscapes of noise are all hauled together and given enough room to breathe, to grow, to drag you into the emotional toil.
There is nothing ground-breaking about this release, it doesn’t extend the genre of extreme metal. It’s just a prime example. Primitive Man damn near broke me last year with their album Caustic with one of the heaviest records in a long time. Strap yourself in, prepare yourself some aftercare, because it’s time for an unwavering and unflinching outing in brutal music.
Near seven minutes elapse in the absence of any vocals, forcing you to pay acute attention to the atmosphere that Primitive Man has made a welcomed habit of creating. Beginning the release with an introduction combining noise and wails of feedback that in itself commandeers the first two minutes. Once the drums start to pound through, each beat hits you like an unnecessarily overpowered goliath; they impact with such gravity, you'll beg for it to be over. Downtuned guitar comes bounding in with the same energy as the drums and strings out the decay for as long as possible before reaching peaking swing, finally collapsing everything back down with torrential force. It’s not uncommon for those who work within this framework of heavy music to rely on hypnotic, repetitive motifs that allow little actual change. Primitive Man have instead crammed every nook and cranny they could possibly find with enough granular haze and malaise that these monster compositions seldom feel like the time consuming slogs they very well have the potential to be. When delivered in quick succession, these musical swings stun with their leviathan weight. It’s confusing. It’s disorienting. The latter end of Naked’s onslaught is overwhelming. Drowning everything in swirls of hearing-ruining feedback and knuckle-dragging, dick-kicking guitar work, Primitive Man solidify themselves as doom metal’s ugliest champions.
A strong segue of power electronics during Love Under Will brings the split into Unearthly Trance’s realm; one that is decidedly more lively but still just as skull rattling. Drawing more from the reserves of sludge and, dare I say, stoner metal, Unearthly Trance dial back on the bone snapping aggression and work in more structure and discernible song writing as the second half of the record drives forward, rather than swarming the peripheries. Mechanism Error marches from the very back with strong-armed drumming that clears the fields in front of it with a scythe; shortly followed by, again, ceaseless guitar bombs. Chord progressions on Triumph inherit the title with bodying riffs and as a solo bursts through the mix like it was shattering a ribcage, the bass hunkers down before decaying into another section of abrasive electronics. Interweaving these soundscape passages between musical deluges give you a brief space to breathe in. The warbling vocals on Reverse The Day channel something esoteric and bring me flashes of Portal’s hellacious shrieks. With this track being the slowest by Unearthly Trance, a significant number of extra sounds are fed in through the feedback along with a choked solo adding its valuable two cents worth to an already chaotic section. Closing it out with 418, it's an extended spattering of digital sounds and the closest thing to be a track by the body without actually being by them.
There really is nothing fancy about this split, no matter how hard you dirty your fingernails trying to pull back the muck and mire and gain insight to the innards of this beast. More than half of it doesn’t feature any vocals, rather, wanting to contort your ears to their will and engulf you in ugly atmosphere. Primitive Man and Unearthly Trance play to their strengths and thread noise with debilitating, slow doom. Remember how I said to get some aftercare? Now’s the time you take it.
- Matthew Lynch.