Just a word of warning - you're going to be seeing a lot of highly enthusiastic writing about this band Primitive Knot around here. After discovering this guy Chris Williams (who's also in a countless array of other bands and musical projects, all of which are killer) a couple of years ago, I've been terminally addicted to his music, particularly Primitive Knot. On the surface, Knot seems to specialize in what you might describe as "old-school industrial metal", and that's definitely part of what's going on. Primitive Knot delivers crushingly heavy metallic crunch, evoking the feel of late 80s/early 90s bands like Godflesh, Pore, Pitchshifter, Skin Chamber...massive percussive rhythms powered by mechanical means, grinding guitar riffs that smash through you like a concrete wrecking ball, a tendency to sculpt these elements into gargantuan, hypnotic grooves. Pneumatic power, as I like to say. And if you're as big a fanatic as I am for that early industrial metal sound, you're really going to dig Primitive Knot. But Knot also transcends any limitations of the style by extensive use of synthesizers and electronics, piling dense textural slabs of effects and distortion on top of these mesmeric, mechanized crunch-a-thons. And the vocals are excellent, with a gruff, stentorian howl that evokes both Killing Joke's Jaz Coleman and Amebix's The Baron. Especially the latter - the vocals here so similar, it's downright eerie. So there's this powerful, weathered, melodic quality to the vocals as they rage over this driving heaviness. A heavy, I mean heavy 80's post-punk energy crackling through each droning hypno-crusher.

One of the most recent Primitive Knot offensives is this devastating 2023 album, released on disc by the ever-excellent Phage Tapes label. Undying Lands exemplifies the bone-crushing industrial trance-metal that Primitive Knot has mastered over the course of a series of increasingly amazing releases. Minimalist visuals on the digipak belie the colossal sound of this thing. Belt-sander guitar tone, hydraulic press percussion, demonic roars announcing visions of apocalyptic mysticism and dystopian dread. The battering ram commences as soon as that grinding guitar riff opens the album with "Hour Of The Wolf", jackhammer kick /snare hitting like automatic rifle fire, sinister Lemmy / Baron-esque growls slipping into weird echo, warning sirens blaring off in the distance. The whole song has two, maybe three riffs, but through merciless repetition, deceptively layered guitar sounds and effects, and an almost krautrock-level focus on hypnotic groove , it's all you need. Skull-stomping, but also strangely psychedelic, especially as you get deep into this. The guitar solos on that song foreshadow the maniacal shred that seethes through the other eight songs, as well. This hypno-metal assault continues with hammering black-sky anthems like "The Castle", "Ground Into Dust", all the way to the closing title track; there are a few moments of charred psychedelia like "Gravity And Grace", a trippy instrumental that features some very cool chorus-soaked guitar and tribal rhythms alongside the machinelike crunch, but the vast bulk of Undying Lands is ceaseless, machine-driven punishment. Those uncanny, imposing, gravel-chewing vocals hoarsely declaim punchy, repetitive lyrics that all evoke weird visions of post-apocalyptic destruction and ruined wastelands as those air raid leads continue to scream far away beyond the steady rhythmic crush. The drum machine programming on Lands is simple but brutally effective, quite different from the slow-mo plod that you hear in most Godflesh-influenced mecha-metal; this produces a chain-belt trance state that's somewhat closer to the feel of Ministry's industrial thrash masterpieces A Mind Is A Terrible Thing To Taste and Psalm 69. The tempo is typically pretty upbeat, with some of the songs like "Masochism Prison" moving into ripping thrash territory. And as with everything else on this disc, every single riff is a goddamn knife attack. "Into The Mouth Of Madness" on the other hand downshifts into a crawling, devastating dirge that summons images of hellish conveyor belts, vast prison camps, and a world cloaked in perpetual black smog.

Highly, highly recommended. Primitive Knot is one of the only bands that matches the relentless industrial ultra-heaviness of Legion Of Andromeda, despite having a distinctively different sound overall. Knot's pitiless carnage actually sounds more unique the more I listen to it - imagine throwing UK hypno-rock heavies Loop, Celtic Frost, Amebix and Rudimentary Peni into a cuisinart along with that classic early industrial metal sound, and you'll get an approximation of the awesomeness that is Primitive Knot.