For many people, the autumn/winter zone between Thanksgiving and Christmas can be one of the bleakest slogs of the year. Can you think of a better way to kick that off than the most doom-laden concert that mortal money can buy? We can't, which was why a black Friday barrage, courtesy of Denver-based doombringers Primitive Man, was a no-brainer. This seems true for many Portlanders, who descended on Star Theater in their toughest black metal shirts, Carhartt work coats, and battle jackets—without a lick of color in sight—an expected aesthetic. An attitude really selling the mood of the night: One where nobody feels anything but dark catharsis… in the best possible way. 

Opening the night was the triple-threat of Portland/Centralia doom duo Defiant Body, Seattle-based quartet Guiltless, and Chinese-American avant-garde keyboardist Otay:onii, each of whom contributed greatly to the atmosphere of the evening. The one-two punch of Defiant Body and Guiltless set the vibes to dark-bleak during a night that would stick almost entirely to a harsh, monochromatic sound that ended up being an endurance test for some. Nobody moshed, nobody thrashed around. It was all scowls, heads bobbing in time with the lumbering drumwork of Billy Graves (Guiltless) and M.J. Gruenewald (Defiant Body), mesmerized by the guttural vocals. Neither act did anything to reinvent the sludge/doom metal wheel, but the aesthetics of both were spot-on, right down to the member of Guiltless wearing a “LOVE SATAN—HATE FASCISM” shirt. 

The pattern breaker for the night was Otay:onii, the solo project of DENT/Elizabeth Colour Wheel’s Lane Shi Otayonii. After taking the stage (adorned in a crocheted shawl looking like a red net covered in flowers), she confided in the crowd that, recently, someone came up to her at the end of a show to ask if she was a witch. We may never know, but after watching her code-switching from beautiful, Björk-like vocals over mesmerizing piano work, to pained wailing and key-hammering discord, we can’t really say she isn’t. Toward the end of her set, Otayonii left the stage to wander the crowd with her microphone, deep-throating it while pantomiming piano playing on the edge of the stage. We don’t know who had the idea to add Otay:onii to this lineup, but we thank them from the bottom of our blackened hearts.

It was almost a bummer when Primitive Man took the stage, because it returned the audience to the unforgiving environments of doom. Described in their own press release as “relentlessly bleak slabs of sonic misery,” you are forgiven if this kind of music isn’t for you. How do you feel about spending an hour with a band, their imposing figures back-lit by abstract images of destruction and political turmoil (and what appeared to be Ben Shapiro), howling guttural lyrics like “My will is a cancer on your fucking life” at you? If that sentence intrigues you, keep your eye out for Primitive Man’s next tour.

Observance, Primitive Man’s 2025 album, strives to distill a beautiful darkness in its construction, a fact likely inspiring Portland’s fiercest metalheads to come out and see how well they execute it live. It’s extreme—but it's extreme music like this that has the power to feel miraculously comforting. The world is bleak, but it’s not pure. It’s unrelenting, “With the holiest gasoline in the sea, I will burn their ships down” kind of bleak. Hearing formidable singer/guitarist Ethan Lee McCarthy’s incomprehensible, borderline inhuman howling really put things into perspective. 

For that hour, Star Theater sounded like the world’s last violent gasps were imminent. Impressively, their sound system allows for apocalypse artistry to shine through, rather than just sounding like actual sludge. Primitive Man didn’t say a word to the audience, which was the correct choice. Their music speaks, or grunts, for itself.

One thing’s for sure: After spending that much time buffeted by sonic brutality, the impending threat of the holiday season doesn’t seem so terrible.