The Chaos and Catharsis of Primitive Man

Denver’s Primitive Man has an approach to doom metal that is so unique, the band's tag is almost misleading at this point. Yes, the three-piece is known to spit forth longer songs with slower reprieves, but that’s about the doomiest thing about them. Primitive Man just isn’t your stereotypical weed-themed stoner jam band obsessively soloing over a plodding backbeat while preaching peace and prosperity. To put it bluntly, Primitive Man’s grating blend of noise-grind sounds and hell howls is more like a living nightmare. A glorious nightmare.

The band exists in a dark corner of the niche subgenre without many peers, so when the local group teamed up with the similarly afflicted Full of Hell for an album, the result was unsurprisingly terrifying, as the title, Suffering Hallucination, indicates.

For Primitive Man vocalist and guitarist Ethan Lee McCarthy, the collaboration couldn’t have gone better, particularly since the two bands have formed a friendship from being on the road together throughout their respective careers.

“We’ve known those guys forever. … We had a real good time [during a 2019 tour], and just got to talking about doing [an album]. It took all this time to get it together,” he explains. “It came together really naturally, even though we were basically adding four new voices to the process of creating for us. It was just seamless. It went surprisingly so well together, like we’ve been doing it for years.”

McCarthy laughs at how easygoing it was, and how he and Full of Hell vocalist Dylan Walker would text lyrics back and forth while writing the five songs that would eventually make up Suffocating Hallucination. In a way, he says, it was therapeutic and cathartic.

“We would be in the studio all day doing instrumentation. Dylan would write out a piece of some lyrics. He’d send it to me in a text; I’d be taking a nap when we were done because I’d be so tired. I’d wake up in the middle of the night, I’d read what he wrote, and I’d write back at him another part. This is how we were doing it. That’s very different for me,” he adds, likening the back-and-forth to a hip-hop freestyle.

The two bands are sharing a stage on Tuesday, March 14, at the Gothic Theatre, along with the Acacia Strain and Fit for an Autopsy. It's sure to be a brutal, loud show. For McCarthy, a local metal diehard who helped create the city’s current scene by relentlessly booking shows over the years, there isn’t as much of an appeal in playing soothing, calming music.

“I do make beautiful electronic music sometimes; sounds that aren’t harsh, but it’s easy to feel calm and love and peace,” he says, revealing a softer side. “It's more difficult to feel the other things, so you have to have a healthy way of dealing with them. This is the healthiest way for me, I think.”

Calling Primitive Man “a pretty introspective band,” he goes on to describe what, exactly, performing this brand of doom does for him.

“For those minutes that I’m up there, I am not worrying about anything. I’m expressing these things and showcasing this music that I’ve made. It’s a self-serving thing, for sure. I think that all musicians have a little bit of narcissism in them, because they think that their shit is good enough to perform to a live audience,” McCarthy admits. “While I'm playing. it’s the most peaceful moments that exist. On the other side of it, it’s like a fistfight, because anything can go wrong and take on a life of its own. Every performance is different. Every night is different.”

Reserved and thoughtful, McCarthy eventually shares that Primitive Man is still one of the best ways for him to process the world around him. “Primitive Man is for everybody,” he says.

“There are just so many things that you can worry about in the world and so many bad things that happen every day, that you have to get that poison out. You have to get that shit out. I don’t drink anymore. I try to live a really peaceful and organized life. That in itself a really chaotic thing to strive for,” he adds. “I don’t know, man. I have to take out my frustrations and these issues that I have with the world and these issues that I have with people, and there are problems that are just so much bigger than myself that I, as a regular person, will never be able to fix, but I see their impact and I just want to speak on them. Better out than in.”

Primitive Man, 7 p.m. Tuesday, March 14, Gothic Theatre, 3263 South Broadway. Tickets are $29.50.