Denver metal band Primitive Man and multi-instrumentalist artist M.S.W.'s Oregon metal project Hell have announced an upcoming album, aptly titled Primitive Man / Hell Split. Slated for February 2019, the release will include two new songs from Primitive Man and one new song from Hell.
Mastered and recorded by Dave Otero of Flatline Audio and the Burial Grounds in Salem, Oregon, the Primitive Man / Hell Split is a doom metal companion piece to the doomed state of things in 2018, according to the artists. Topping twenty minutes in total, the album evokes the decaying world and how to best navigate it, through death metal grooves, guitar riffs, growls, screams and unsettling imagery.
“The world is rotting all around us, and that’s what these songs are about," says Primitive Man lead singer and guitarist Ethan McCarthy.
The decision to collaborate was an easy one. Primitive Man and M.S.W. have played shows and festivals together numerous times over the years.
“We chose to do a split with Hell out of a mutual respect for their art. M.S.W. has easily written some of the best doom/sludge songs of the last five years, and we’re excited to be able to share a release with him," McCarthy says. "We’re kind of in the same realm of this gross and angry sludge shit. Neither one of us is weed metal, and [finding people] you like discussing sludge bands with are few and far between. It’s always nice to find like-minded individuals. We were just like, ‘You want do a split?’ ‘Yeah,’ ‘Okay, well we’re recording then,’ and he said, ‘Alright.’"
The artwork for the split, done by McCarthy, shows the state of the world from multiple viewpoints and perspectives – reflective of the very nature of collaborating with another artist.
“I talked with him about his lyrics, where he was coming from, that sort of thing, and then I kind of combined the ideas to make the art for the split. From different viewpoints with different problems – that’s essentially what we’re speaking on.”
The album will drop on Translation Loss Records on February 22, 2019.