Dissonant Harmonies

After a twelve-year journey at the forefront of underground music, #Death_Sludge Pioneers, #PRIMITIVE_MAN is back and more ferocious than ever with their latest album, Observance! This powerful record takes aim at the myriad ills plaguing our world, offering a raw, unfiltered glimpse into the personal and societal struggles we face. With haunting lyrics inspired by Tongo Eisen-Martin’s *Blood on the Fog*, frontman Ethan McCarthy invites listeners into a labyrinth of experiences, exploring the broken social contract affecting working-class lives. While the media fixates on party politics, McCarthy confronts the more sinister specter of techno feudalism and the urgent need for human rights. Collaboratively crafted with drummer Joe Linden and bassist Jon Campos, Observance showcases PRIMITIVE MAN's signature heavy sound while venturing into new experimental territory. Recorded at Bricktop Recording Studio in Chicago with producer Andy Nelson, the Album set to release on October 31, 2025, via Relapse Records. Links: Apple Music, Spotify, Bandcamp, M-A

"One of the most innovative names of the Avant Black Metal scene worldwide returns with his tenth opus, a concept album telling the ritual stages in the long journey of dead souls towards the jaws of the eight-eyed psychopomp Abxulöm... The mix of fierce brutality, ritualistic darkness, obscure presence, inscrutable structuring, enchanting synths, and emotive vision is a compelling one... The album is raw, dense, and willingly impenetrable, inviting only the most hardened of cosmic travellers to partake of its wares." - Headbanging Moose

"The blistering brutality on display is withering, yet equally potent is the ability to build majestic soundscapes that haunt and terrorise the listener... Psychedelic explorations, abyssal doom, folk enrichments, and other textures and layers can all be found across the album, revealing the breadth of skill that the artist behind the band can call upon... The mix of fierce brutality, ritualistic darkness, obscure presence, inscrutable structuring, enchanting synths, and emotive vision is a compelling one... The album is raw, dense, and willingly impenetrable, inviting only the most hardened of cosmic travellers to partake of its wares." - Wonderbox Metal

"For all intents and purposes, there are just some creations out there that words can hardly do justice for... With ten tracks that clock in for a runtime of over 83 minutes, this is the second longest creation from Esoctrilihum... It’s through a nightmarish landscape that we are guided towards an oblivion after abandoning our flesh that Esoctrilihum paints a haunting tapestry that perpetuates its own mythology while carving out new paths in that obscurity... With the inclusion of fresh instruments like the harp, kantele, and hammered dulcimer, Ghostigmatah quickly gains a terrifying personality that’s all its own... It’s evident that Esoctrilihum refuses to let itself become predictable or really understandable in damn near any form." - Head-Banger Reviews

"Ghostigmatah - Spiritual Rites of the Psychopomp Abxulo‌m" is the tenth album by #ESOCTRILIHUM released by I, Voidhanger Records, and its ten compositions seal the blood pact between the artist and the label. Often accused of having no sense of measure, Asthâghul churns out a new double album that is grandiose, symphonic, psychedelic, liturgical, delirious. In a word, excessive. "Ghostigmatah" is a prism that reflects every single nuance of the ESOCTRILIHUM sound, from the bombastic black/death of the masterpiece "Eternity Of Shaog" to the death/doom deviations of "Dy'th Requiem For The Serpent Telepath," up to the recent psych-folk metal explorations of "Do‌th-Derniàlh." To his typical mix of electric guitars, synths and percussions Asthâghul also adds organ, kantele, harp, theremin and hammered dulcimer, while maturing his vocals equally divided between cavernous growls, black metal screeches and clean chants. Conceptually, the album is divided into four chapters, each of which tells a ritual stage in the long journey of dead souls towards the jaws of the 8-eyed psychopomp Abxulo‌m, who will finally deliver them to eternal nothingness. A post-mortem ritual that is told in the secret grimoire of the Ghostigmatah, a sort of modern Necronomicon that constitutes another piece in ESOCTRILIHUM's phantasmagorical visionary world, this time built on the suggestions of the wonderful cover painting by Alan "Medusawolf" Brown. It is a nightmarish, mystical dimension of death beyond time and space, inhabited by an artist who, through his music, fearlessly lets its dark light filter into our reality.

"Ghostigmatah - Spiritual Rites of the Psychopomp Abxulo‌m" is the tenth album by #ESOCTRILIHUM released by I, Voidhanger Records, and its ten compositions seal the blood pact between the artist and the label. Often accused of having no sense of measure, Asthâghul churns out a new double album that is grandiose, symphonic, psychedelic, liturgical, delirious. In a word, excessive. "Ghostigmatah" is a prism that reflects every single nuance of the ESOCTRILIHUM sound, from the bombastic black/death of the masterpiece "Eternity Of Shaog" to the death/doom deviations of "Dy'th Requiem For The Serpent Telepath," up to the recent psych-folk metal explorations of "Do‌th-Derniàlh." To his typical mix of electric guitars, synths and percussions Asthâghul also adds organ, kantele, harp, theremin and hammered dulcimer, while maturing his vocals equally divided between cavernous growls, black metal screeches and clean chants. Conceptually, the album is divided into four chapters, each of which tells a ritual stage in the long journey of dead souls towards the jaws of the 8-eyed psychopomp Abxulo‌m, who will finally deliver them to eternal nothingness. A post-mortem ritual that is told in the secret grimoire of the Ghostigmatah, a sort of modern Necronomicon that constitutes another piece in ESOCTRILIHUM's phantasmagorical visionary world, this time built on the suggestions of the wonderful cover painting by Alan "Medusawolf" Brown. It is a nightmarish, mystical dimension of death beyond time and space, inhabited by an artist who, through his music, fearlessly lets its dark light filter into our reality.

Promotional Note Collapse of Pattern, Reverence of Dust drags you into a raw, eight-part journey through emptiness. Each song peels back the layers between memory and oblivion, order and chaos. Built on jagged riffs and drenched in haunting textures, this album traces the gradual decay of mind, identity, and ritual. From the first shudder of collapse to that final, ash-choked breath, it offers no solace.

Been around to the world’s end, the ever-gurgling vista of anguish And on it there slither the last men Decayed shapes buried in firn Step into the ice And see a path unfold: The loneliness of denudation, Radical un-meaning, Dim and impenetrable, like solitude of the dead, them prey of worms, their bones picked clean On to the very pit of silence By the fuming trail of ruin To the bleeding edge of rupture Each step an erasure Strict abrasion, leaving nothing but absence As threads snap in boundless night Dead dust swirls in the dark Let it perish, let it fade, let it smolder to ash Katargein Heḥərîm Pulverize the world and raze it with salt Defiance Denial Abolish what little concord there’s left Lost trace of the confusions Cold grains crawl upwards Step into the ice And see a path unfold: From one state of contempt to the next To the radix of godhood To the world-without-us Katargein Heḥərîm Pulverize the world and raze it with salt Defiance Denial Abolish what little concord there’s left Katargein Heḥərîm Pulverize the world and raze it with salt Defiance Denial Abolish what little concord there’s left

Band's Statement about the single: “It is the 10th anniversary of the release of "Exercises in futility" CD today – an album that has turned out to be of profound importance for Mgła. Its creation involved almost complete isolation, with literally every part of the process being handled by ourselves. What has not been revealed before is that the album was originally intended to consist of seven songs. During the album session, we recorded drums and guitars for all seven. Meanwhile, we decided that the album would work better as a compact, single-vinyl release, which required removing one of the tracks. Its further recording was therefore discarded, and the source material archived. We revisited it a decade later for the album’s anniversary, arranging and recording bass and vocals in August 2025.