Just Fuck It

First things first: I hope that wherever this post finds you, you are alone (or with your significant other or family in your home), and that you are safe, and that you are healthy.  I can't remember a time like this; maybe it was my youth, but I don't remember such wide-sweeping panic happening after 9/11.

Exclusive Interview - Ethan Lee McCarthy (Primitive Man)

This past Friday, Mick and I ventured forth to Chicago's Cobra Lounge, one of the city's truly great, unheralded venues, for one of the most extreme shows we've ever seen.  After a couple stellar craft beers from All-Rise Brewing, we were fortunate enough to bear witness to the heavy ugliness of Denver's Primitive Man and the glacial doom of Seattle's Bell Witch.  I had been set to see both bands before, before being stuck at work and then stuck on my honeymoon, so the show was a culmination of years of waiting.  And I gotta say, it did not disappoint.  Bell Witch was profound, playing the first half of their monstrous track/album Mirror Reaper.  There is a lot of quiet in the album, and it would be easy to lose the audience, but (short of one or two drunkards) Bell Witch held the audience in the palm of their hand, everyone swaying with rapt attention.  As great as Bell Witch was, Primitive Man was the highlight for me.  One of the heaviest, nastiest sets I've ever borne witness to, the trio was louder than they had any right to be, absolutely pummeling their instruments and the audience.  I've seen a fair share of heavy bands at Cobra Lounge, but it wasn't until Friday that I actually worried about the structural integrity of the place.

After the show, though, is when things got real good, as Mick and I had the absolutely delightful opportunity to speak with Ethan Lee McCarthy, the guitarist, lyricist, and vocalist from Primitive Man.  In our chat, we covered the Denver music scene, the best Chicago pizza, and why Kansas City is just fronting about how cool it is.  It was a blast to chat with Ethan, and I hope you enjoy it.  Primitive Man and Bell Witch are on tour now; you really owe it to yourself to see them.

Primitive Man - Caustic

It feels like Primitive Man has been around forever, but in reality their debut full-length Scorn came out only four years ago.  Since then, however, they've released nearly a dozen singles, splits, and the EP Home is Where the Hatred Is, making them one of the more prolific bands going.  The Denver sludge trio has put out some of the darkest, most repulsive sludge around in the past four years, and with the release of their sophomore LP Caustic, it appears that was just a warm up.

Primitive Man - Home is Where the Hatred Is

Few - if any - records have been as aptly titled as Primitive Man's Scorn.  That album, released in 2013, was forty minutes of dense, repulsive sludge metal unlike anything I had ever heard.  A lot of sludge bands steep themselves in gloom or a state of forlorn anguish, but Primitive Man bathes in spiteful ugliness, unapologetically spitting in the face of humanity.  Outside of (maaaaybe) the UK's Dragged Into Sunlight, nobody does misanthropy like Primitive Man.  Scorn is an agonizingly bleak album that I honestly have trouble listening to often because I occasionally enjoy being happy, but I can't deny how great it is, and how good Primitive Man is.  Whether you can listen to them once a day or once a month, the band is so punishingly on point with their sound and vision that you start thinking "Yeah, fuck everything! ...except these guys; these guys are pretty great."  Home is Where the Hatred Is, the band's EP follow up to Scorn, goes to show you that even if you can't judge a book by its cover, the title can still be a pretty good indication of what you're reading.