Primitive Man
Caustic

LA RECENSIONE

Caustic: substance that causes the necrosis of organic tissues (Treccani, Encyclopedia).

How to describe the sound of what is perhaps the heaviest album of 2017 (heavy without falling into the ridiculous)? Well, let's put it this way: some time ago, around here, that rag of white trash known as Vermin Womb passed by. Here it is: take the music of Vermin Womb - who with our own share the "singer" ELM - and slow it down twenty times: you'll have "Caustic" by Primitive Man.

Yeah, but I don't even know Vermin Womb, you silly poop-head, so what the heck are you telling me? Darn it! Let me try again: the VW are purveyors of a merciless and rotten Deathgrind like few others, woven with Black metal riffs. Here Death becomes Sludge, Grind becomes Doom; and while we’re at it, so as not to miss the party, let's inject a little Noise as well. And it turns out that the perverse lashes of the Womb fall to the bottom and condense into a huge, massive, fatal magma.

A distortion of clear Sludge origin and then off to the dances: sick, catacombal dances. A suffocating heaviness, an auditory torture machine: in the opener "My Will", it already seems like hearing the bells of one's own funeral; a brutal cross between Esoteric, Shining, and Eyehategod. We agree, it's a not very original syncretism of genres lately: but here it's interpreted in a sensational way. The following track, "Victim," contains some of the few accelerations of the album, and the contrast with the slow parts is an anvil that falls on the back from the sixth floor, while ELM's atrocious growl, with its characteristic "GUUU," drills through your poor head. We're only at the third track, "Caustic," (where it feels like the skin is crumpling), and already my backbone is shattered.

The cyclopean "Commerce" contains an almost ascetic Drone heart, which when pulsates rips your veins; the following "Lepid," "Sterility," and "Sugar Hole," passing through the interlude "Ash," are three more baths in muriatic acid, they are the lead ball of the cover that strikes your exposed and defenseless skull. Alright, but it must be over, right? You wish: "The Weight" (no spoilers here...) is the fitting introduction to "Disfigured," an interminable series of blows to the face; it's like feeling it, the club tearing off chunks of your living flesh, while the Noise of the blade incising your optical nerve makes its terrifying entry. It is the end, I am dissolved, annihilated, beaten, bled out, it is inevitable: just as "Inevitable" is the title of the next terrifying track, eager to simmer your last remains. The massacre is accomplished; there’s just space for "Absolutes," where it seems the band is messing around aimlessly, but... but...

A further extremization of their debut "Scorn," already quite heavy. The only flaw? For me, the absence of spoken samples.

A concentrate denser than molasses; a chasm of hatred, madness, resentment, disgust towards the slavery of capitalism and society. There is no courage in hatred, said Ian MacKaye: and indeed I have very little courage... now I am alone, naked, cold, slimy like a slug and I feel so much, so much fear...