PRIMITIVE MAN return with their most crushing album to date, Observance. After twelve years at the forefront of underground music, PRIMITIVE MAN takes merciless aim at the plentiful ills that besiege the world around them, and in the process of doing so do not spare themselves from their flagellating tongue-lashings.

With motifs and symbols recurring throughout the lyrics and artwork (also created by McCarthy), and drawing influence from the work of Tongo Eisen-Martin - specifically Blood on the Fog - McCarthy doesn’t offer answers, he only seeks to share his experiences. Personal and professional pitfalls are explored against the backdrop of a broken social contract that is decimating the lives of working class citizens. While party politics dominate the media, a more insidious divide preoccupies McCarthy as he is haunted by techno feudalism and the future of human rights and social unrest.

Whilst McCarthy’s lyrics are a dominant presence throughout Observance, the six songs that make up the album are a truly collaborative effort written and arranged with absolute devotion. Drummer Joe Linden, bassist Jon Campos and McCarthy threw themselves into writing shortly after the release of 2022’s Insurmountable EP. Committing to the task at hand, the trio describe themselves as “obsessed” during the genesis of Observance; the intricacies of shaping their evolving, trance-inducing sound became all-consuming.
Despite leaning into their more experimental side, PRIMITIVE MAN maintain a tight grip on the heavy sound that has defined them for years. Observance is still a challenging record, demanding the listener’s attention at every turn. The sound of Observance is imbued with a new element for the band - sadness. Yet McCarthy describes this as the most positive PRIMITIVE MAN record to date; even as they pick over the carcass of disillusionment they still seek a way out, a path towards the light. Observance was recorded and mixed throughout February and March 2025, at Bricktop Recording Studio in Chicago with producer Andy Nelson, before being mastered by Arthur Rizk.

KOLLAPS is an Australian post-industrial project whose history is inseparable from violence—both as subject matter and as physical methodology. Formed on the periphery of collapse and personal disintegration, the project has cultivated a reputation for performances that are confrontational, ascetic, and unwavering in their commitment to realism. The band has recently relocated to Iceland, a move that reflects its ongoing pursuit of isolation, severity, and a more unforgiving creative environment.

The live apparatus centres on a set of morgue-derived instruments and implements: blood- and saliva-stained headrests, knee pins, hacksaws, throat expanders, and other devices once used to manipulate, open, and restrain the human body. These objects are not symbolic. They function as percussive tools and structural components in performance, carrying the residue of their original purpose into the project’s sonic architecture.

Since its inception, Kollaps has maintained a relentless touring history across Europe and beyond, appearing at major festivals including Roskilde, Roadburn, Wave-Gotik-Treffen, Soulcrusher, and other significant institutions within the industrial, experimental, and extreme-music circuits. On stage, Kollaps operates less as a traditional band than as an apparatus of tension and rupture, constructing compositions from metal fatigue, concrete pressure, ruptured electronics, and recurring motifs of decay.

Kollaps represents a form of post-industrial music that rejects nostalgia in favour of excavation: unearthing the mechanical, the biological, and the violated. It is a documentation of harm, endurance, and the machinery of the body—ultimately, a study of disappearance and the residue left behind when civility is stripped away.