Been following Primitive Knot for a few years now, delving into downloads, grabbing cassettes that unearth dark blasted walls of doom, their graphics and sound always full of a chaotic shamanic power that I have always tuned into. This release feels a little different. Less of the druid football chants that came before. Primitive Knot head out into the streets with an industrial strut of white noise. Vocals seem more hidden in the machinery, spirit mills in the concrete where other releases tended to conjure more abiding presences in the season of the witch.
Title track Puritan starts with a high pitch squeal that only the initiated can hear. It’s organic and techtronic all at once. The deep dark breath of Manchester and its melodic hypno sweats ya into a white zombie pant. It’s an inhuman freaking master stomper, freeing the binds of whatever the fuck is going on around you. Puritan’s inborn power is to capture and battle forth one’s personal rebellion.
Discipline & Punish doesn’t stray too far into any key changes, that hypnotic prominent bass prepares ye for the trance, to be penetrated. It takes a while for the stake to start burning but once Primitive Knot hold you in a beat narcotic they tear your eyeballs out, pushing you into a blindness of sensory deprivation, guitars, then double kicks to the guts. PM’s vocals are way fuzzed into the mix, a percussive static to keep you in their grip.
Harrowing comes from nowhere. It has tendrils and chills and a cosmic reach of space. An apocalyptic synth blows up in my ears, reverberating, erasing everything. I’m expecting these feelings to permeate this trajectory into the industrial void as the dogs at the gates of spell greet me. This ambience best experienced laying still as one is taken out of their comfort zone. This one’s a real mind spinner, a gripping and ripper track.
Vanilla Transgression‘s title sounds like it should be soft pop in a three piece, but its not. This babe is hot metal and musically one of my faves as Primitive Knot’s hooks take hold of my skin, suspend me into some kind of flesh acrobatics and given the full light show. The moment PK tune into my dark erogeny is always my favourite time, shexual healing at its best. Vocals growl with an authoritarian muster and Nordic grunt. There’s always enough sparks to jutt your strut but it’s the abiding presence inside the cosmic hymn that keeps you wanting.
Complicity‘s chains and speed is much needed. In these final tracks I just wanna let go but the maestro keeps holding back the big bad boom! Such a tease, controller of his underground sound. Live this would be turbulent, a sprung dance floor of reverie. I like how this swirls around your dome a touch, a cranial massage, labotomis interlude. It’s metallic swish resounds with Mammons grip, this place we invade is one of endless dystopian menace.
This release has an underlying angst reflecting this new England. Politics Here Is Death summing up the anger and blight dead end many feel right now, Doom Doom Doom goes the drum. It’s Armageddon, its locusts, its dust in our lungs. These rhythmic scrapes and tussles scream down the fretboard absorbing, destroying, deflected for our rebellion.
You can listen and download this and many other releases from this prolific outfit here. Keep an ear out for live rituals and sonic doom by subscribing to their newsletter. For all info straight to your soul, you can connect with Primitive Knot via twitter
URBAN F 